Schwartzerwitz

Foreigners streaming into WCape

2012-02-08T05:42:00.001-08:00

Foreigners are streaming into the Western Cape in their thousands, becoming both the victims and perpetrators of crime, MPs heard on Wednesday.

“An estimated 8 000 a month are flowing into the province,” provincial police commissioner Arno Lamoer told Parliament's police portfolio committee.

The committee was being briefed by each of the nine provincial police commissioners on crime statistics, following the release of these in September.

“If you see the influence of foreign nationals in the Western Cape, you will be shocked,” Lamoer told MPs.

He invited them to take a trip with him to the Bellville railway station.

“You will see what it looks like there with foreign nationals – and it's only Somalians we have in that (Bellville) area.”

His power-point presentation to the committee – a copy of which was not immediately available – also referred to Nigerians, Congolese, and Namibians in the province.

Lamoer said home affairs in the Western Cape was processing hundreds of foreigners each week.

“Home affairs gave an indication that at their processing centre, where they (foreigners) apply for asylum, we're talking about 500 to 800 that come per day. The processing is about 800 per week.”

Lamoer referred to a gang of Namibians robbing houses along so-called green belts in Cape Town's southern suburbs.

“There was a group of foreign nationals, Ovambos from Namibia, that we arrested. We arrested them but they were released on bail.”

Foreigners were also on the receiving end when it came to crime.

Police had investigated the rise in business robberies in the province, which started after the 2010 World Cup, and had discovered that only a third of the victims were South African.

Many foreigners had established spaza shops or were operating businesses from containers or from their homes. Many did not bank their takings and slept on the premises.

“”One of the major problems... is the spaza shops, the container shops, and the house shops. Eighty percent of business robberies involve these establishments.

“But only 33 percent of the victims of these robberies are South Africans; the rest are all foreign nationals. We have a serious problem.”

Lamoer also questioned the legality of many of these businesses. He criticised Cape Town authorities for not properly applying city by-laws.

“What we've discovered is that foreign nationals are not supposed to trade unless they have a working permit and a trade permit.”

Lamoer said this was a “major challenge” and one that he was taking up with the department of home affairs.

He also reported that foreigners were arming themselves.

“We arrested – from April 1 to December 31 last year – a total of 72 foreign nationals with 70 illegal firearms. They are arming themselves because they need to protect themselves.”

On illegal drugs, Lamoer said police in the province had, since April 1, 2010, confiscated drugs with a street value of over R12 billion.

“Every single day we confiscate drugs,” he said.

The police, together with their traffic counterparts, were working to block the entrance of drugs into the province.

“We started in January last year, specifically in the Beaufort West area. In the first week, we stopped buses, as well as taxis and courier vans... and in the first week confiscated R50 million worth of drugs from these buses.”

The police had contacted the bus companies and instituted a scheme to tag loaded luggage.

“Some of them listened, but last week, on Friday, we got another bus with khat on board. There was no tag. We arrested the bus drivers and we confiscated the bus....”

The owners of the bus where now giving the police “very good co-operation”.

A minibus that was stopped while being transported on an auto-carrier in the southern Cape was found to be “full of dagga”.

Lamoer said illegal liquor was another big problem.

“We confiscate liquor every week. Over the past year, more than a million litres was confiscated.”

On gang violence in the Western Cape, Lamoer said this was linked to drugs.

“As soon as we put on the pressure and confiscate drugs, the gang violence goes up.”

Lamoer said tik was not the most-used drug.

“Heroin is the one, and it's more addictive than any other drug... It is a major, major problem,” he said.

The provincial police commissioners from the Free State and North West provinces, who preceded Lamoer at the briefing, both also reported an increase in crime related to foreigners. – Sapa

Sleeping foreigners severely beaten

2012-02-02T00:55:00.000-08:00

Eight foreigners sleeping in their shack in the Doornkuil informal settlement, south of Joburg, were seriously injured by men who assaulted them using knobkieries, baseball bats and golf clubs.

Johannesburg Emergency Management Services spokesman Robert Mulaudzi said paramedics went to the informal settlement on Wednesday. They attended to eight foreigners who had suffered serious injuries.

“They told us that they were sleeping when a group of between five and six men stormed into their shack and immediately attacked them,” Mulaudzi said.

The Zimbabweans and Malawians were taken to Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital for treatment.

Mulaudzi said three were treated for minor injuries, while five with serious injuries were kept in hospital.

The victims, who were working for a construction company, told emergency services that the attack was the first of its kind since they came to live in the informal settlement.

Mulaudzi said the victims told them that some of the local residents had, in the past, demanded cash from them when they got their wages. They would demand between R50 and R100 from them.

“We can’t at this stage claim that it was a xenophobic-related attack. We will monitor the situation,” he said.

In another incident, two Bangladeshi shopkeepers died at the weekend after being severely burnt whentheir container shop in Thokoza was torched. A group of men poured petrol into their shop and set it alight.

SA experienced explosive xenophobic attacks in 2008 in which 62 people were killed and more than 1 000 people fled their homes. They had to be placed at various police stations and churches.

The foreigners were accused of stealing jobs and RDP homes meant for locals. - The Star

Refugees still fear for their lives

2011-12-12T03:34:00.000-08:00

Nearly three years after the xenophobic violence in South African townships, some foreigners are still living in what was meant to be temporary shelters because they are afraid of going back to their former communities.

Two groups of refugees -- one near the De Deur police station in Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg, and the other at the Rural Institute for Education and Training (Riet) family guidance centre in Randfontein -- seem to have slipped through the cracks. The Gauteng department of social development said all camps it was responsible for had been closed down.

Spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Alphonse Munyaneza said this week that it would help to "reintegrate" them back into communities.

The groups were initially housed at a camp in Akasia, Pretoria, and 10 months later (in 2009) were moved to the shelters in Orange Farm and Randfontein, which were paid for by the UNHCR for two months until the refugees could find alternative accommodation.

Speaking to the Mail & Guardian outside the Riet centre, a large, well-kept building with tight security, Abdul Ahli from Somalia said he feared for his life if he returned to the townships.

"I am a human being. I don't want to die in South Africa. I don't want to be killed by someone who doesn't even know my language," he said.

Ahli owned a spaza shop in Diepsloot, north of Johannesburg, before the xenophobic attacks broke out. He escaped but said: "Look here, they burnt my leg," pointing to a dark scar on his left foot.

Ahli is one of 61 refugees still living at the centre. Normally, the centre houses abused women and children.

Ivan Kortje, the centre's manager, tried to have them evicted but the group obtained a court order prohibiting him from carrying this out. He said this week that the centre was now overcrowded and he had to pay high water and electricity bills. "I will never help xenophobia victims again," he said. Kortje's attorney, Tashya Giyapersad, said: "They are claiming to be refugees but they are not. They are moving in and out freely and some of them are earning money. These people are not disenfranchised". (From the Mail and Guardian)

South Africa: No safe haven for Somalis

2011-11-10T00:53:00.000-08:00

Many thousands of Somalis have fled famine and warfare at home, braving a treacherous journey across the continent to reach South Africa but some feel their new lives in Africa's richest country are little better than the misery they left behind.

"If we wanted to fight we would have stayed in our land. We didn't come here to die we came here to take care of our families," says Qorane Haji, 29, whose shop was looted and burnt down in recent months.

Mr Haji has been living in South Africa for over five years. He owns a shop in Motherwell, a township in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape Province.

More than 300 shops are owned by Somalis in the area, he says.

Most of the Somali population in South Africa lives in the Eastern and Western Cape provinces.

No-one can save us, we came to South Africa to be safe but we have become targets of bad men who kill us just because we are not from here”

Poverty and unemployment are high in South Africa - many people in the poor communities believe that foreigners are "stealing their jobs".

Somali-owned shops have been looted or burned down as a result.

In 2008, South Africa saw a wave of xenophobic violence which shocked the nation and shook up the world's view of the "rainbow nation".

Some foreigners were necklaced - set alight with petrol doused tyres around their necks - and their shops were burned down.

Mostly Somalis, Zimbabweans and Mozambicans were targeted during the violence which left more than 100,000 foreigners displaced and at least 60 people dead.

The government's response to the crisis was to increase police presence in affected areas and to send its officials to address disgruntled communities.

But after a while the police patrols stopped and with them, the visits by officials.

Those behind the attacks were never brought to justice - after some months it was as though the attacks had never happened.

No brotherly love

More than 32,000 documented Somalis, Some say many more illegally the Second largest group of asylum seekers in South Africa. Many have set up shops in the Eastern and Western Cape provinces.

Fleeing famine and warfare at home

"When they came in 2008 my brother and I were sleeping inside the shop, he was in another room. A group of men came in, shot him and burned the shop down - I was lucky to escape," Mr Haji recalls.

It took him more than six months to rebuild the store then but the attacks have now resumed.

"Xenophobia is back," he says.

A few months ago - some men burned down his shop again. He says the ordeal made him feel "unsafe and unwanted".

His brother Anwar Haji, 28, agrees.

"No-one can save us, we came to South Africa to be safe but are being killed just because we are foreigners," he says.

Many Somalis own spaza shops - makeshift kiosks usually run from private houses or a shack of corrugated iron.

The authorities have dismissed reports of xenophobia, saying the attacks are due to business rivalry.

The Haji brothers are once more rebuilding their shop
This has done little to allay the fears of foreigners, who say they are victimised daily by locals who call them "makwerekwere", a derogatory term used for foreigners.

The Department of Home Affairs, in charge of registering refugees and asylum seekers says there are more than 32,000 documented Somalis living in South Africa.

But some say this is an underestimate because many more have come into the country illegally.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says Somali nationals are the second largest group of asylum seekers in South Africa - after Zimbabweans.

'Unfair competition'
The latest influx of Somalis has sparked fears that relations between Somali and local shop-owners could worsen, says Abdi Habarwa, 45 a spokesperson for the Somali community in the Eastern Cape.

Somalis and other foreigners were the victims of vicious attacks in 2008
But Daluxolo Mpengu, 51, who heads the Nelson Mandela Spaza Forum of South Africa (NMSFSA), a new association established by South African businesses owners in and around Port Elizabeth, insists that foreigners are exploiting their market.

"We have found that some foreigners own more than one shop in the same area which is bad competition for us," Mr Mpengu told the BBC.

He says they don't condone xenophobia, but says foreigners need to abide by certain rules if that want to continue business in the townships or have their shops closed.

NMSFSA says foreigners are not allowed to open a shop within 500 metres of an existing business selling the same wares.

This rule will later extend to local shop owners, the association says.

Many residents, however, don't want the Somalis to be forced to close their shops and are happy with the low prices and wide variety of goods they stock.

Mr Habarwa also owns a shop in Motherwell and hopes the new guidelines will help to ease tensions.

He says he uses some of the money he makes to support his relatives living in the world's largest refugee camp in north-eastern Kenya.

"I am not the only one depending on the money the shops makes. This shop is helping me to give my family in Dadaab a better life," says Mr Habarwa.

He fears they could suffer if the continued attacks mean he has to close down his shop.- BBC

Shop owners threaten foreigners with 'bloodbath'

2011-11-09T23:54:00.000-08:00

Shop owners in Soshanguve, north of Pretoria, have threatened "civil war" if the government does not stop what they term an "economic stampede" by foreigners.

The shopkeepers plan to march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria on November 24 with businessmen from across Tshwane in protest against Somali, Pakistani, Ethiopian and Bangladeshi people operating in the township who, they say, are threatening their livelihoods

Mpane Baloyi, chairman of the Soshanguve Broader Business Forum, which was formed with the sole mandate of driving out the "intruders", said the foreigners were deliberately destroying local businesses by dropping prices, and increasing them again once local shops had closed down.

"Local-owned shops are closing down while foreigners' shops flourish," he said.

"These people have pushed us to the limit and are driving us into poverty in our own country.

"This is a ticking time bomb and there will be a bloodbath if the government continues to ignore our pleas," he said.

Police spokesman Lieutenant Dikatso Thebe would not comment on the matter yesterday, saying it was regarded as xenophobia, which is dealt with at provincial level.

Gauteng police spokesmen lieutenant-colonels Tshisikhawe Ndou and Lungelo Dlamini could not be reached for comment.

- Timeslive

Sent to die Shocking fate of suspects in alleged rendition deal with Zim cops

2011-10-23T02:15:00.000-07:00

Hawks and SA police arresting suspects and sending them over the border to be murdered.

SENIOR officials in the Hawks and SA Police Service are conducting illegal "renditions" with their Zimbabwean counterparts - by arresting "suspects" and illegally sending them across the Beit Bridge border to be murdered.

Explosive intelligence reports - listing at least three deaths - are understood to be in the possession of Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa.

They detail a "renditions" operation led by officers reporting to Hawks boss Anwa Dramat and Gauteng police commissioner Lieutenant-General Mzwandile Petros.

Rendition is the illegal kidnapping and transfer of a prisoner from one country to another.

Dramat yesterday confirmed that at least three individuals identified by the Sunday Times as having been "renditioned" to a grisly fate in Zimbabwe were, in fact, taken across the border by the police. But he claimed they were properly "deported". He was unable to provide any documentary proof of this.

In just one case, the Sunday Times has evidence that Zimbabwean Witness Ndeya, 26, who was suspected of shooting a policeman in that country, was "renditioned" by the Hawks and then murdered, apparently by Zimbabwean police.

The occurrence book at Soweto's Orlando police station confirmed that Ndeya was arrested, along with his nephew and two friends, for being "illegal immigrants" on November 5 last year.

But, unlike other illegal immigrants sent to Lindela detention centre, police records show the four men were discharged at 11.55am on November 8 and driven to the Beit Bridge border by police.

In a sworn statement by one of the four, Shepard Tshuma, he named General Shadrack Sibiya and Captain Cowboy Maluleke as having arrested them.

The Zimbabwean police met their South African counterparts at the border and, according to Tshuma, "told us that we are under arrest for the murder of police officers".

Tshuma and Ndeya were detained at a Bulawayo police station before the former was released a week later.

A few days later, Tshuma said, the Zimbabwean police told the family "that Witness Ndeya was killed by other police officers".

Ndeya's death certificate confirmed he died at "Hippo Valley Farm" in Bulawayo on November 20, with the cause of death listed as "multiple gunshot wounds".

Tshuma, along with the other two surviving "renditioned" suspects, are now hiding in South Africa, after allegedly being threatened by Maluleke.

This week, the Sunday Times met the three at a secret location. They said they feared being "deported and murdered".

Tshuma said: "As soon as we were handed over to the policeman, they said they are going to kill us for murdering a policeman [and] they'll start by chopping off our hands and feet."

The Sunday Times is aware of several other individuals who have also been renditioned to Zimbabwe.

In another case, intelligence reports say Pritchard Tshuma, 24, was arrested in November last year for "murder and robbery" in Alexandra in Johannesburg and "deported" to Zimbabwe. He has since gone missing.

Another man, Gordon Dube, was arrested in Diepsloot and "renditioned" to Zimbabwe, where, sources say, he was killed by police after first having his hands chopped off.

Dramat confirmed that Ndeya, Dube and Tshuma were "all arrested as illegal immigrants" and were "deported ".

But he denied these were illegal renditions, saying everyone "followed protocol", whereby deported individuals must be handed over to an immigration official from Zimbabwe.

His spokesman, McIntosh Polela, said: "At no point did we simply hand over people to authorities without [an immigration official present], because that would constitute rendition."

This, however, is contradicted by Tshuma's statement. He said: "We passed the SA side of the border, and we parked the car inside ... I saw five African males jumping out from their cars, and they introduced themselves as Zimbabwe police officers ... [who] told us we were under arrest for [the] murder of police officers."

Such behaviour is a contravention of the Immigration Act and flouts a "special dispensation" by the government at the time that prevented Zimbabweans from being deported from South Africa.

The high court also recently ruled that authorities "acted unlawfully" in extraditing someone without guaranteeing they would not face death.

Dramat said: "We are not aware of what happened to them in Zimbabwe. It is not our mandate to do follow-ups on deported [people]."

Zimbabwean police spokes-man Oliver Mandipaka said he "can't confirm or deny that Ndeya was arrested or killed".

General Sibiya, who agreed to meet the Sunday Times, but later cancelled, said: "I don't know [Ndeya, and] I'm not in a position to sanction this."

General Petros said he "did not sanction, neither did [I have] knowledge of any illegal renditions".

Captain Maluleke refused to answer questions.

- Timeslive

Foreigners live in fear in Alex

2011-10-21T01:59:00.000-07:00

Residents of Alexandra's RDP houses have reacted to menacing calls for foreigners to vacate RDP houses in the township within seven days with a mixture of fear and nonchalance.

Last weekend groups of residents, some co-ordinating their movements by phone, moved around extensions seven, nine and 10 handing out flyers and putting up posters warning foreigners living in RDP houses to vacate within seven days or risk "being pushed like animals or aliens".

"The resident [sic] of Alexandra doesn't want to revoke [presumably "revive" is meant] xenophobia, unless you give the cause to do so," the flyers read.

Anecdotes of exactly when the leaflets surfaced differ. Some residents say youths distributing them last Friday also barricaded streets with burning tyres in extension 10, whereas others in the same section say they were being shoved under doors last Saturday evening.

It is not clear how organised the groups are, although some reports have mentioned that a group calling itself the Alexandra Bonafides has claimed responsibility.

The crude pamphlets specifically mention foreigners who own RDP houses as the targets. But a Zimbabwean resident told the Mail & Guardian that every foreigner appeared to be under fire, whether living in a house or renting an adjoining room. Several single-storey houses in the Far East Bank were flanked by smaller structures occupied by tenants.

The man, a resident of extension seven who asked not to be named, said he was given a flyer on Sunday evening before being coerced into an interrogation about his living situation. "I told them to speak to my landlord, as I am just a tenant here," he said.

He told the M&G that he was playing it by ear, as he had done in 2008 when xenophobic violence engulfed the township. "There's no cause for panic just yet, but what I'm afraid of is the possibility of physical violence."

Census officials
Other residents said they were unsure how to regard the census officials, as they felt some people could use the census as a way of sourcing information about where foreigners are located.

"We aren't against the census," said Tswaleka Mathebula. "We just think that some people could hijack the process. Some people came here asking my daughter questions. When she told them her surname was Mathebula, they said: 'Ja, we know you Mathebulas and Chikanes, you're all from Maputo.'

"When I heard this, I came out and told them not to talk that shit here. We are from Giyani [in Limpopo province] and I've got all the papers for this house and every other document they could need. I didn't even ask for this house, I got it because they were building a bridge across Stjwetla [an informal settlement in Alexandra], where I lived for 10 years."

Mathebula, who lives in an RDP house with her three children and her husband, has two tenants in her yard, one from Zimbabwe.

She said that although some people had acquired their houses corruptly, the right approach was to take such grievances to the department of housing or the Alexandra Renewal Project. "They mustn't come and tell us that every Shangaan-speaking person is from Maputo."

Although most people who own RDP houses are South Africans, the housing policy does not preclude people with permanent-residence from qualifying for state housing.

The Gauteng minister for local government and housing, Humphrey Mmemezi, has called for people to provide evidence of the corruption they believe is running rampant in the Alexandra Renewal Project, which built the RDP houses.

"If we had evidence of that we would have prosecuted," said the minister's spokesperson, Motsamai Motlhaolwa. "The minister has been on record several times saying that people must come to us with evidence. Nobody must be forced to pay for an RDP house as they are for the poor."

A South African man who rents to a Malawian tenant, Phetole Rakgwahla, said he would not protect his tenant if protests turn violent.

"Our brothers don't have houses and we don't know how foreigners got them," Rakgwahla said, pointing to an RDP house. "The allocation process has gone completely haywire. We can live peacefully with one another but they mustn't think they are here forever."

Although the township was calm on Thursday, a community meeting was planned at the corner of 2nd Avenue and John Brand Street.

-- Kwanele Sosibo is the Eugene Saldanha fellow in social justice and inequality reporting supported by CAF Africa

- M&G

Cele’s xenophobic outburst

2011-10-07T05:02:00.000-07:00

National police commissioner Bheki Cele was forced to retract comments regarded as xenophobic at a breakfast meeting of officers in Khayelitsha on Thursday. But later in the day, he was back to his explosive self, calling on police to confront violent criminals with all the force at their disposal.

Unveiling the police’s holiday season safety plan for the Western Cape, Cele claimed in an address to officers that “people who jump borders” were flooding into South Africa, competing for housing and resources, and squeezing out locals in the process.

Cele said this was fuelling xenophobic violence.

“We can’t have a country that’s run by people who jump the borders,” Cele said.

Cele said Somalis had pushed out locals from business and rental property in Bellville and many other areas.

“If you rent a flat there, they come and rent you out. At the spazas, they’re better stocked than Shoprite.

“Our people have been economically displaced; all these spaza shops (in the townships) are not run by locals.”

While Cele was speaking, a member of the audience shouted: “They’re not banking!”

To this Cele asked: “One has to ask, what happens to the money?”

He said the situation, especially in townships was untenable, and would eventually reach a breaking point.

“One day, our people will revolt, and we’ve appealed to DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) to do something about it,” Cele said.

But later, pressed about his statement by a member of Khayelitsha’s Community Police Forum (CPF), Cele retracted and said there was no confusion.

“We can’t be ambiguous abut crime … if you assault a Pakistani, a Burundian, a Rwandan, that’s crime. Crime is crime, it has no face or nationality,” Cele said.

Khayelitsha has had a lull in attacks on Somali-owned spaza shops after the intervention of the local police and community structures after a spate of violence which was believed to be fuelled by rivalries with local competitors.

Police, Cele said, were spending too much of their resources on service delivery protests, which had an impact on crime fighting.

Addressing a question about police reservists, Cele said there could be no expectation that reservists would enjoy preference when applying to join the service.

“If you want to join the police, join the queue,” Cele said.

One issue police would not compromise was the requirement that all new recruits were without criminal records.

On CPFs, Cele said their responsibility was being taken away from the police administration by the ministry.

He said some CPF heads had become police apparatchiks, who were not aware of their statutory role and instead preferred to be indunas.

“They must not go to the station and tell police what to do,” said Cele.

In the Harare section of Khayelitsha, as he went on a walkabout, shaking hands and talking to children, some residents excitedly called out:”Nanku Bheki Cele!” (Here’s Bheki Cele).

After seeing Cele, Sibongeseni Mntuyedwa, 21, said Harare was not safe, especially the Endlovini informal settlement, which bordered the Wolfgat Nature Reserve.

“There are too many criminals here,” Mntuyedwa said.

“People can’t walk in the mornings to work as they face being attacked and robbed by criminals, many of whom don’t live in the area,” Mntuyedwa said.

Later, when he opened the new premises of the Milnerton police station, Cele told more than 500 people that, although murders had dropped significantly countrywide, he was taking no joy in the statistics.

Cele said the 15 000 people murdered in South Africa last year, although down from the 18 000 in 2009, was still too many.

Police officers were also being targeted by criminals, and for that Cele told officers they could not engage violent criminals peacefully.

“Then they have a confrontation with the police, their peers in this (signalling a gun).

“Then they complain about (their) human rights.

“Don’t misinterpret me, I fought for human rights. I did not fight for criminal rights.

“I never said ‘shoot to kill’, but I said when criminals go for cash heists and bank robberies, they prepare … they take their best weapons, they don’t go with broomsticks and feather dusters.

“We are not going to be cowered down by criminals.

“Police, when you go there, get ready, take your best machinery. We give teachers chalk, we give doctors stethoscopes. Criminals should be scared of the police,” Cele said.

But he reiterated that the police’s primary objective was not to shoot criminals, but to arrest them. - Cape Times

Home affairs resumes Zim deportations

2011-10-07T05:01:00.000-07:00

The moratorium on deporting illegal Zimbabweans has quietly been lifted by the department of home affairs, leading to an outcry from refugee rights groups.

No deportations of Zimbabweans have taken place for almost two years while home affairs have been running the Zimbabwe documentation project (ZDP) to offer legal status to Zimbabweans living illegally in South Africa.

Organisations working with migrants are angry that the department has not been open about a memo that was circulated among the police, army and refugee offices on September 27 explaining that deportations would resume.

The Mail & Guardian has a copy of the directive issued by director general of home affairs Mkuseli Apleni to the defence force, police offices and department of home affairs branches. The directive says "it aims to give clarity on Zimbabwean nationals who are not presently detected", and outlines the procedure that officers must follow when deporting immigrants.

Home affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa would not answer questions about the directive but did issue a press release this week saying that illegal immigrants could not claim protection under South Africa's laws. "No country in the world will allow illegal immigration within its borders. This is international practice," he said.

Mamoepa told the M&G that the government had shown goodwill in attempting to regularise the status of Zimbabweans in the country and had given them a window of opportunity to hand in their fraudulent documents in return for amnesty.

People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty's Braam Hanekom said the "deportations are in direct contradiction to the recent undertakings made by home affairs director general, Mr Apleni, to Parliament not to embark on deportations of Zimbabweans until the Zimbabwean documentation project has been completed, appeals reviewed and the minister has approved deportations."

But the ZDP project is not complete. According to a research report compiled by the African Centre for Migration Studies (ACMS), "as of October 4, 145 000 permits were dispatched of 275 762 that were received, though processing was still taking place".

Creating problems
Human Rights Watch estimates that there are 1.5-million Zimbabweans in the country, although fewer than 300 000 applied for legal paperwork during the amnesty period.

ACMS senior researcher Roni Amit said the resumption of deportations was "going to create problems". She said refugee rights groups were angry because home affairs had not been transparent about resuming deportations and that media reports this week had included denials of such a directive.

Amit said police who arrested Zimbabweans and sent them to deportation centres generally did not verify whether the individuals were still waiting for permits.

The directive instructs officers to check if "the suspect has a pending application" for legal status and to conduct an interview with the suspect. But Amit was not convinced by this, saying: "The verification system does not work."

Amit said public health groups had not been given advance warning that deportations were about to start.

ACMS researcher Jo Vearey said Zimbabweans on chronic medicine for tuberculosis or HIV/Aids needed to continue taking their medication after deportation or run the risk of developing resistance to the diseases or catching multidrug resistant TB.

"Detention facilities are the perfect space for onward transmission of TB, and this poses a health risk to police officers and public immigration officials."

- M&G

Illegal Zimbabweans to be deported

2011-06-30T21:39:00.000-07:00

Any undocumented Zimbabweans still in SA by the end of the government's amnesty period in July will be deported, home affairs said on Thursday.

When the July 31 moratorium extended last year to Zimbabweans expired, those who were still undocumented would be given a grace period, then sent back home, head of the Zimbabwe document project Jacob Mamabolo told reporters.

This grace period would also allow those whose applications were rejected to appeal, he said. He would not say how long this period was going to be.

Earlier this year, the number of rejected applications was just over 100 000. The high number forced the department to review them.

"The number was too high...Then it emerged there was inconsistency in the application of requirements, and we wanted to view their applications in a manner that enhances registration," Mamabolo said.

Last year, the government called on all Zimbabweans in possession of fraudulent South African IDs to return them to home affairs without being prosecuted. This also included a special dispensation and moratorium on deportations.

1.5 million Zimbabweans in SA

According to the department's statistics, there are approximately 1.5 million Zimbabweans in the country. However, the December 31 2010 deadline saw only 275 762 registering to legalise their residency.

On Thursday, the department said 133 331 permits had so far been issued to Zimbabweans. However, not all applicants had collected them.

"The figure includes those who applied for amnesty... Issuing does not mean they are collected."

Mamabolo said that despite SMSes sent to those who had not yet collected their documents, some still remained at the department. Others still needed to submit further documentation and have their fingerprints taken.

"The department continues to do everything in its power to ensure it meets its obligation to document Zimbabweans living in South Africa. However, we can only succeed with the full support of all applicants."

Documents would be kept for 30 days, and then destroyed.

The department would meet the Zimbabwean stakeholders' forum next Monday, to ask them to encourage their compatriots to collect their papers.

Mamabolo said his department had adjudicated 263 141 applications. A total of 12 621 were still outstanding.

He was confident the department would meet the July deadline to conclude the process, after which it would focus on other nationalities.

"We continue to interact with the Zimbabwean embassy and consulate to ensure the fast-tracking of the issuance of the necessary travel documents to those who applied for them."

The consulate also had until July 31 to issue passports to those who had applied.

The success of the project was also premised on support from other groups, including the insurance industry, the financial intelligence centre and major banks - where some Zimbabweans had opened accounts and acquired loans using fraudulently acquired ID books.

Many Zimbabweans had over the past few years entered South Africa illegally to escape the deteriorating political and socio-economic climate in that country. (from News24)

Immigrants defy threats to trade in Soweto

2011-06-30T13:21:00.000-07:00

Bangladeshi immigrant Hashim Abdullah peers behind the thick iron bars of the security barrier between himself and his customers at his shop in Soweto, South Africa's most famous township.

Abdullah, like many foreign shopkeepers in Soweto, has fortified his shop following renewed threats to drive immigrant business owners out, particularly Somalis, Pakistanis and Ethiopians.

In May he closed his shop for 10 days after a local small business group accused him of weaning away its customers.

Dozens of shops belonging to foreigners across the sprawling township also closed down, some looted and vandalised over the last two months, in anti-foreigner threats concentrated in areas around Joburg, Cape Town and in the Eastern Cape province.

“We are not entirely safe here, some people want us out but not everyone wants us to go,” said Abdullah.

Abdullah's roadside shop - housed in a derelict building and stocked with basic necessities like soap, rice, bread and soft drinks -resembles a fortress, save for two arcade games often occupied by children.

Customers slip money through a small gap between the bars and he walks to the shelves to collect the goods to be purchased.

“It is better this way because it is hard to tell who is here to cause harm or not,” he said.

Despite the hard conditions, the 42-year-old arrived in South Africa three years ago said he had no intention of abandoning his business. Instead he is planning to expand.

“This is the city of gold. People have more money here that is why I don't want to give up,” said Abdullah, who had previously owned a shop in rural Queenstown in the Eastern Cape.

Anti-immigrant tensions in South African townships have been simmering since the wave of the 2008 xenophobic violence that left some 62 people dead.

The leader of the Greater Gauteng Business Forum chairperson, Makhosana Mhlanga, a group that is calling for the expulsion of immigrants, told AFP that Soweto was out of bounds to people from outside the country.

“We don't want them in our townships, they are invading our space and taking away opportunities that should be used by local people,” said Mhlanga.

The newly formed forum is also accusing the shopkeepers of selling goods at low prices, in an attempt to frustrate their competitors. They have sent homemade “eviction notices” telling foreigners to close shop, raising tensions in the township.

Not everyone in the community agrees with him. Some welcome the foreign-owned shops, which tend to open early and close late - unlike many South African stores.

“I am against the idea of chasing the foreigners out. Their shops are close to us and you can easily walk to them when you ran out of something,” said Soweto resident Portia Selote.

One group of South Africans even staged a pro-immigrant march last march, chanting “We want the Somalis to stay” - because they said Somalis offered lower prices.

Amir Sheikh, secretary general of the Somali Community Board, admitted that his community members were trading under difficult conditions in townships.

In May a Somali shopkeeper was killed in his shop in Khayelitsha outside Cape Town, and there had been similar killings in townships around the country, according to Sheik.

But it's hard to ascribe motives to isolated incidents in a country where violent crime is alarming common, with an average 46 killings a day.

“The killings are brutal and worrying,” said Sheikh adding that he did not believe that the recent threats were fuelled by xenophobia but jealousy.

“The communities that we work with have no problems with us, it is a small group of people calling themselves business people who are jealous of us,” said Sheik. (from IOL)

‘Xenophobic’ committee head lashed

2011-06-30T07:46:00.000-07:00

Opposition MPs and Parliament guests were shocked as the chairwoman of the parliamentary oversight committee on home affairs, Maggie Maunye, implied that foreigners flocking to the country were soaking up resources and preventing South Africans from enjoying their freedom.

Maunye made the remarks on Wednesday at the conclusion of a briefing of her committee by Home Affairs officials. The delegation included deputy home affairs minister Fatima Chohan, and had dealt with the issue of refugee reception centres.

Maunye suggested South Africa should turn away foreigners, as Spain had chosen to do, and questioned human rights laws and the constitution, which she said were used as an excuse to accommodate foreigners.

“Really, this intake, for how long are we going to continue with this as South Africans?” Maunye asked. “Is it not going to affect our resources, the economy of the country?”

She continued: “I think that as the portfolio committee, we need to sit down and discuss this openly; on how long are we going to continue with the intake without the support of other countries.

“You know, we see on TV Spain turning refugees back to their countries, and here you will be told of human rights laws; you know the constitution is against that and all sorts of excuses, and here we have people who are living in poverty daily, people who are unemployed.

“We’ve never enjoyed our freedom as South Africans. We got it in 1994 and we had floods and floods of refugees or undocumented people in the country, and we always want to play as if no there’s nothing like that.”

She said that apart from refugees, there were also “wrong people” who entered the country, such as the “Rwanda war criminal person… and they are all here”.

“What are we saying about them? We let all these war criminals come to the country. When we are supposed to tell them to go back, we are told that we’re violating human rights laws and all that.”

Maunye added that it was important “that we become cool-headed and sober and decide how to deal with this”.

Maunye tried to backtrack on her comments after a rebuke from the DA.

DA MP Annette Lovemore distanced herself and her party from the tirade, saying such statements were a foundation for xenophobic attacks on foreigners.

Raising a point of order, Lovemore said she was very disturbed by Maunye’s remarks and by associating “ourselves (committee members) with what you are saying”.

“That’s exactly the kind of attitude… that is causing the new wave of xenophobic attacks that is happening right now and (that) NGOs are warning is going to escalate…

“We cannot as a portfolio committee be saying that we don’t want people from outside South African borders here.”

Attempting an about-turn, Maunye said: “I am saying since 1994 we have had an influx of people coming to the country. I said documented and undocumented people, and also that it impacts on our economy.”

She referred to documents dating back to 2008 that detailed how much the country, including banks and insurance companies, were losing through corruption because of fraudulent ID documents.

“I am not saying people must not come to the country,” Maunye said.

“People must come to the country with proper documents.”

– The Star

Permits issued to more than 130 000 Zim migrants

2011-06-30T07:45:00.000-07:00

A total of 133 331 permits have been issued to Zimbabweans enabling them to legally remain in the country, the home affairs department said on Thursday.

However, not all the applicants had collected their permits, head of the Zimbabwe Document Project, Jacob Mamabolo, said at a briefing on the status of the amnesty project in Pretoria.

"The figure includes those who applied for amnesty...Issuing does not mean they are collected."

Mamabolo said that despite SMS' being sent to those people who had not yet collected their documents, some still remained at the department.

Other Zimbabweans still needed to submit further documentation and to have their fingerprints taken.

"The department continues to do everything in its power to ensure it meets its obligation to document Zimbabweans living in South Africa.

"However, we can only succeed with the full support of all applicants," he said.

The December 31, 2010 deadline saw 275 762 Zimbabwean nationals registering to legalise their residency in the country.

Mamabolo said his department had adjudicated 263 141 applications. A total of 12 621 were still outstanding.

He said the department would meet the July deadline to conclude the documentation process, after which they would focus on other nationalities.

"We continue to interact with the Zimbabwean embassy and consulate to ensure the fast tracking of the issuance of the necessary travel documents to those who applied for them."

- Sapa

Government in denial about xenophobia: report

2011-06-28T19:26:00.000-07:00

The government is in denial about xenophobia, says an independent peer review report released on Tuesday.

“The evaluating group felt that the South African government is not doing enough to address the issue of xenophobia and pointed out that there is even an element of denialism on behalf of some officials,” says the report, titled, “Implementing the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) Views from Civil Society”.

It was released by the APRM Monitoring Project (AMP) to the Pan African Parliament on Tuesday.

The AMP is run jointly by the SA Institute of International Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Africa Governance, Monitoring and Advocacy Project.

South Africa's last peer review report, called the South African Implementation Report II (SAIR II), in January 2011, did not pay enough attention to xenophobia, says the document released on Tuesday.

“It is noteworthy that SAIR II devotes a whole section to xenophobia, which introduces further responses from government to xenophobia and acknowledges the role of civil society in taking a lead on the issue.

“However, it is poorly written with inadvertent repetition and was clearly assembled in a hurry.”

A wave of violence against foreigners swept through South Africa in May 2008, leaving at least 67 people dead and tens of thousands displaced.

Since then, several reports of pockets of violence against foreigners in different parts of the country have surfaced in the media.

The report gives South Africa's dealing with xenophobia a red rating, which means “no progress has been achieved on addressing the issue; or very little progress has been achieved and the government does not seem to be on track to complete it in the near future”.

On racism, South Africa receives an orange rating Ä slightly better than red.

“The evaluating group noted with concern some of the rhetoric from politicians seemingly aimed at increasing racial divisions that preceded the 18 May 2011 municipal elections.

“However, given the country’s past, the group also noted that apart from isolated incidences of racism, South Africa needs to be given credit for the way the society has moved on. Nevertheless, although much progress has been achieved, many issues remain, hence an orange rating,” says the report.

African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema called white people criminals and accused them of stealing land shortly before the municipal elections.

- Sapa

Xenophobia flames up in Limpopo

2011-06-19T23:29:00.000-07:00

Thousands of Zimbabweans living in a township outside Polokwane, Limpopo, fled last week following the most serious wave of xenophobic violence to hit South Africa in recent months.

The purge included the killing of Zimbabwean Godfrey Sibanda, who was cornered by a mob and stoned to death on Monday night in Extension 75 of Seshoga township, northwest of Polokwane, while walking home from work.

Six RDP houses in Extension 71 which had been rented to Zimbabweans were also torched by large mobs.

More than 3 000 other Zimbabweans fled to hide in nearby bushes.

Sibanda was accused of raping a five-year-old girl and for being behind other criminal acts in the area, which included the murder of a couple last week and robbing a security guard.

The police said they had heard of the incidents, but had no record of these alleged crimes being reported to them.

The day after Sibanda was killed, more Zimbabweans were attacked and evicted from their homes by locals who dumped their blankets, bags and other belongings on the street.

Those who escaped unharmed were being sheltered at the Seshego police station with their families. They said that more than 3 000 of their fellow countrymen were displaced.

They were scared to go to the police because they thought the police were working with the community, said Christopher Manyanhaire, 27.

He was evicted from his home with his sister, three-year-old nephew and brother-in-law.

He said that the mob caught his sister, Locadia, after she tried to escape through the window.

"They were at the door trying to kick it down but I was holding it while my sister tried to escape, but they caught her and beat her until the police arrived,” he said.

Manyanhaire, whose family was among those at Seshego police station, said locals had complained about Zimbabweans getting state houses cheaply from owners who rented them out.

“They have no right to be living in an RDP house because it’s for us South Africans,” said Paulina Makokwane, a South African whose house is surrounded by three Zimbabwean-occupied houses that were torched on Tuesday.

House-to-house search

On Tuesday evening, City Press witnessed a group of close to 200 people going from house-to-house looking for Zimbabweans.

Provincial police spokesperson Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi said one person was arrested for arson and they were still investigating the murder case.

Fungai Chingorivo, who was part of the evicted group at the police station, said she and her husband had lost everything they had worked for since coming to South Africa in 2008.

“We don’t know what to do now. We have no money and going back home to Zimbabwe empty-handed is pointless because our children and families are suffering,” she said.

By Thursday morning, there were 20 displaced families at the police station with some of their belongings which they had managed to save.

More were expected to arrive and the police have called in local disaster-management officials to help with shelter.

ANC Limpopo spokesperson David Masondo said the party was “disappointed” at what had happened and that it was symptomatic of economic stress in both Limpopo and Zimbabwe. (from IOL)

1.3 million Zimakwerekwere to be evicted from SA

2011-01-08T00:21:00.000-08:00

South Africa is preparing to forcibly deport the up to 1.3 million Zimbabweans that did not apply to regularise their stay before the 31 December deadline. Preparations are already made for the mass exodus.

According to the South African Ministry of Home Affairs, more than 275,000 Zimbabwean nationals living illegally in the country had applied to regularise their stay in South Africa within the deadline.

The Ministry's Director-General, Mkuseli Apleni, said that all the applications would be treated by March this year. Mr Apleni indicated the number of applications was greater than expected. "No one would be deported until the all the applications had been processed," the Ministry informed yesterday.

However, there are an estimated 1.5 million Zimbabweans living in South Africa, many of whom migrated as a result of the social and economic unrest in Zimbabwe in recent years. Most did not qualify for a South African residence application because they are unemployed or only have part-time jobs.

Up to 1.3 million of these Zimbabweans are therefore now risking deportation. The Ministry of Home Affairs has confirmed that Zimbabweans hereafter deemed as illegal immigrants will be arrested and deported to Zimbabwe.

Zimbabweans in South Africa and outside claim that many were not given a fair chance to apply as the Zimbabwe government was not cooperative in providing Zimbabwean passports. Passports were needed to present an application for South African residence.

South African human rights activists further criticise the process, fearing that the planned arrests and mass deportations will further push exiled Zimbabweans underground, exposing the further to poverty and crime. Many, employed in the informal sector and therefore not qualified to apply, would therefore lose their livelihood.

In South Africa, where the unemployment rate is now over 25 percent, the forced eviction of illegal immigrants is however widely welcomed by the population.

Meanwhile, plans are made on both sides of the border for the announced forced exodus. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) today announced it has "begun to implement a contingency plan to provide humanitarian assistance to Zimbabwean migrants" who will probably forcibly returned from South Africa in a few months.

"IOM, together with humanitarian partners and the Zimbabwean and South African governments will provide humanitarian and protection assistance to vulnerable returnees, including unaccompanied minors," the organisation said today.

Under the plan, two major reception and support centres at Zimbabwe's borders with South Africa and Botswana are already being equipped with large quantities of non-food items including tents and blankets.

The two locations - Beitbridge and Plumtree - are principal points for cross border traffic for Zimbabwean migrants and opened for forcibly returned migrants already in 2006 and 2008. The two centres have already assisted some 437,000 Zimbabweans returnees, but never received such a great wave that may be expected later this year.

From the two reception and support centres, the expected 1.3 million Zimbabwean returnees are to be reintegrated into society. For this, plans are vaguer, and normal Zimbabwe government and international community development schemes somehow must find shelter and employment opportunities for the returnees.

But Zimbabwe has yet to recover from its political and economic meltdown. Zimbabweans in South Africa know there is currently little hope for their future in Zimbabwe. Many will seek to go underground in South Africa rather than being sent home.

- Afrol News

SOUTH AFRICA-ZIMBABWE: No deportations until March

2011-01-08T00:17:00.000-08:00

JOHANNESBURG, 7 January 2011 (IRIN) - Undocumented Zimbabwean migrants were given until 31 December 2010 to regularize their stay in South Africa, but this has been extended to 31 March, and problems with issuing passports by the Zimbabwean authorities could delay the process even further.

"There will be no deportations until the end of March," said Ricky Naidoo, spokesman for the South African Department of Home Affairs.

In September 2010 South Africa announced a moratorium on deporting Zimbabweans and said it would allow migrants until 31 December to regularize their stay by applying for work, business or study permits.

The lull in deportations will give the department time to process more than 275,000 applications for permits received from Zimbabwean migrants. "We are trying our best to complete the adjudication process in the next few weeks," Naidoo said.

The South African government relaxed its requirements as the 31 December deadline approached and now awaits a variety of outstanding documents, including passports, to process the applications.

Zimbabwean migrant rights organizations in South Africa, such as the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum (ZEF), and People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP), expressed their appreciation.

"They [the South African government] even accepted applications with just birth certificates and, in some instances, not even that," said Braam Hanekom of PASSOP.

The two NGOs are helping migrants who have applied for permits to obtain the required documents. The biggest problem was getting a Zimbabwean passport.

Only about a sixth of the estimated Zimbabwean irregular migrant population applied for legal status

Earlier this week, the Zimbabwean registrar general's office indefinitely suspended the production of passports, temporary travelling documents, and other documents such as national identity cards and birth certificates, after saying an electrical fault had affected its database in the capital, Harare.

ZEF's Gabriel Shumba estimated that at least 100,000 applications for South African permits had been submitted without passports.

Naidoo said South Africa had offered to help the Zimbabwean government issue the passports, but refused to comment on whether the offer had been accepted. So far, 42,779 applications had been finalized and approved, 10,166 were awaiting review, and 222,817 were awaiting adjudication.

The Zimbabwean daily newspaper, The Herald, which supports the ruling-ZANU-PF party, on 7 January quoted Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede as saying that they would start issuing passports again on 10 January.

Bureaucracy could delay deportations

Tussle over planned resumption of deportations

Deportation of Zimbabweans to begin again

Rumours of xenophobia send foreign nationals fleeing

"But will that help? They have a tremendous backlog," Shumba noted. Thousands of Zimbabweans who went home to obtain identity documents have been left stranded.

Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh, head of the refugee and migrant programme at Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), a South African organization, told IRIN that the Zimbabwean authorities had been issuing 500 passports a day before they suspended production.

The price of not applying

Hundreds of thousands of Zimbabwean migrants could face deportation from South Africa, "as only about a sixth of the estimated Zimbabwean irregular migrant population applied for legal status," the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement.

"There are an estimated 1.5 million Zimbabweans living in South Africa, many of whom migrated as a result of the social and economic unrest in Zimbabwe in recent years."

The organization has reception centres for refugees at the Beitbridge border crossing from Zimbabwe to South Africa and in Plumtree, the main border crossing between Zimbabwe and Botswana, and is on standby to provide free transportation to deportees. With support from local and international bodies, IOM has prepositioned non-food items including tents and blankets.

ZEF's Shumba said inadequate publicity about the regularization process and lack of information on the requirements had deterred many Zimbabweans from applying.

Employers had also often been reluctant to provide letters of employment for fear of persecution. "The home affairs [department] assured these employers that there will be no action taken against them a bit too late," Shumba said.

"Most Zimbabwean migrants work part-time, it was difficult for them to establish full-time employment," Hanekom noted.

Nevertheless, Zimbabweans migrants could still apply for asylum, he said. "The application will provide them a temporary asylum seeker’s status until their interview to establish whether they qualify - this can take up to two years."
He noted that asylum applications by Zimbabweans had a dismal record, "95 percent of them get rejected, but it can still get you some time."

In the past 10 years, as hyperinflation, and social and economic problems have rocked Zimbabwe, more and more Zimbabweans have sought refuge in neighbouring South Africa, the most economically advanced country in the region.

- IRIN Africa

South Africa relaxes Zimbabwe deportation paperwork

2010-12-31T03:41:00.000-08:00

South Africa has relaxed requirements for Zimbabweans to get permits to stay in the country, prompting thousands to queue at government offices.

They have to get correct paperwork before a new year deadline, otherwise they will face deportation.

Officials now say that passports are no longer required and those still in the queues by closing time will be seen.

Some two million Zimbabweans are estimated to be in South Africa, many of them illegally.

They have been fleeing recent instability and economic crisis in their own country.

Slow and bureaucratic
In September, Zimbabweans working illegally in South Africa were told they had an opportunity to be processed and, if successful, given work visas and residency to stay.

So far, nearly 150,000 people have taken advantage of the amnesty and applied across South Africa in what correspondents say has been a painfully slow bureaucratic process.

Applicants have had to present their Zimbabwean passports, their birth certificates and letters from their employers or affidavits from the police to prove self-employment.

But many of the migrants crossed into South Africa from Zimbabwe illegally - without passports.

On Friday morning, Mkhuseli Apleni, director general of the Home Affairs Department, said this requirement had been dropped to encourage more people to apply and speed up the registrations.

He also said all those in the queues would be seen even after the offices closed at 1700 local time.

The BBC's Nomsa Maseko in Johannesburg says that, given the length of the queues, the process could last well into the night.

- BBC

Mugabe won’t ask SA for extension of Makwerekwere permits deadline

2010-12-31T03:36:00.000-08:00

Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has accused President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF party of deliberately derailing the documentation of Zimbabweans living in South Africa.

“We are actually dismayed by the lukewarm attitude of the (Zimbabwe) government towards its citizens, they should be assisting but they are throwing spanners in the project,” South Africa-based MDC spokesperson Sibanengi Dube said yesterday.

The comments came amid fears that thousands of Zimbabweans would not be able to meet today’s deadline that South African authorities set for them to regularise their stay in the country.

The process of regularisation requires Zimbabweans to be in possession of passports from their country. But the Zimbabwe embassy has only been able to issue about 500 passports a day.

Mugabe rejected outright the South African government’s efforts to assist Zimbabwe to produce more passports.

“We are of the view that the Zimbabwean government isn’t excited about this project, (because) it will enable citizens to go and vote,” Dube said.

Minister of Home Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said this week an offer to Zimbabwe of a printing press with a capacity of printing 100 000 passports daily was ignored by Harare.

Speaking from Harare, the Zanu PF spokesperson Rugare Gumbo dismissed the MDC assertions as “nonsensical”.

“We cannot turn against our own people – MDC assumes everyone who is South Africa will vote for them,” he said. “We have supporters living and working there.”

The South African government has insisted that it would not extend the regularisation deadline, which ends today.

The director of Zimbabwe Exiles Forum Gabriel Shumba said the Zimbabwean government was not keen to assist with this project. “They have failed to attend most stakeholder meetings with Minister Dlamini-Zuma.

“They have indicated that they don’t care. It’s unlikely they will seek an extension.”

Human Rights groups in the country have been calling for an extension of the deadline to allow an easy process.

More than 150 000 applications have been lodged with Home Affairs, which is a small number compared with the three million Zimbabweans estimated to be living in South Africa illegally.

Makwerekwere Mob South African Immigration Offices on Documentation Deadline Eve

2010-12-30T03:38:00.000-08:00

In a last-minute push for applications, officials told Zimbabweans to remember that the deadline only concerns applications and that they can complete applications after the deadline with full documentation

Zimbabweans queued by the thousands on Thursday at offices of the South African Department of Home Affairs in an eleventh-hour bid to file applications for four-year work, study and business residency permits before a Friday deadline expires.

Meanwhile, a senior official in the South African Department of Home Affairs confirmed to VOA that South Africa offered technical assistance to Harare to speed up production of passports to meet heavy demand by Zimbabweans in South Africa. But Zimbabwean officials only took up an offer of office space in Pretoria and Cape Town, he said.

South African Home Affairs Department Director General Mkuseli Apleni declined to say whether his office offered Harare use of advanced passport-making equipment.
But Zimbabwean Co-Minister of Home Affairs Theresa Makone said the government in Harare had declined the offer of access to state-of-the art passport-making equipment to speed up the documentation program. She said the government made the decision on security grounds - but added she had not been able to obtain a clear explanation.
The equipment was capable of turning out around 4,000 passports a day in comparison to the Zimbabwean government capacity of just 500 documents a day.

Makone said she personally regretted Harare's decision not to avail itself of the offer of access to technology, as this would affect many Zimbabweans in South Africa.
With just about 24 hours left for Zimbabweans in South Africa to regularize their resident status or at least get a start on that task by submitting information to authorities, many expatriates were flocking to immigration offices.

For last minute tips on meeting the deadline at midnight Friday, reporter Tatenda Gumbo spoke with Gabriel Shumba, Director of the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum, and Jacob Mamabolo of the permit regularization project.

Mamabolo says Zimbabweans must remember that the deadline only concerns permit applications, and that they can complete their application at a later date.

- VOA

Tear Gas Released as Zimakwerekwere Throng Seeking Passports at Johannesburg Consulate

2010-12-29T04:08:00.000-08:00

A crowd estimated at 15,000 became restless after waiting for hours at the Zimbabwean Consulate in Johannesburg without being served, resulting in a surge that led security guards to fire teargas canisters

South African security guards fired teargas canisters Tuesday at a temporary passport application office of the Zimbabwean Consulate in Johannesburg to halt a disturbance among Zimbabweans seeking to file applications for the new passports they need to apply for a four-year residency permit issued by South African authorities.

Zimbabweans working, studying or running businesses in South Africa are trying to beat the clock with a deadline looming on December 31 by which time they must regularize their stay or at least file preliminary paperwork to avoid being subject to deportation.

An estimated 15,000 Zimbabweans had lined up at the Zimbabwean Consulate.
The crowd became restless after hours without visible progress, witnesses said. Tempers flared and people charged towards the gate to the passport offices, leading the security guards to panic and fire teargas cannisters to repel the crowd.

Chaos followed as people ran in all directions. Teargas victim Teresa Nzvombe accused security guards of frustrating those in line by demanding bribes to allow them entry. She said authorities added to the misery of those standing in line by putting those making an initial application and those in the final stages of application in the same line.

Austine Moyo, head of the South African branch of the Movement for Democratic Change formation of Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai urged all Zimbabweans who have not applied for passports to use Zimbabwean identity and other documents to file residency permit applications before the deadline, seeking the passport later on.

Earlier this week Home Affairs Department spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa issued a plea urging Zimbabweans to use the time remaining to put in whatever paperwork they can manage. He again stated that the December 31 deadline will not be extended.

Father Mike Nyamarebvu of the Stakeholders Forum comprising officials of the South African Home Affairs Department and Zimbabwean civic groups and political parties told VOA Studio 7 reporter Ntungamili Nkomo that he is happy with the strong turnout by Zimbabweans trying to beat the deadline and legalize their status.

- VOA

Deadline looms for Zim refugees

2010-12-29T04:04:00.000-08:00

As the clock ticked towards the deadline for Zimbabweans to apply for papers allowing them to remain in South Africa, hundreds of Zimbabweans jostled for position at the Home Affairs centre in Wynberg yesterday.

A special dispensation granted to Zimbabweans which allowed them to live, work, study and have access to basic health care in South Africa ends on Friday, after which those who do not have asylum papers, approved refugee status or permits face deportation.

With the December 31 deadline looming, Zimbabweans queued at the Wynberg centre from the early hours to submit their documents.

With many in the queue feeling their places were threatened by new arrivals, resourceful Zimbabweans created a list to maintain order.

Braam Hanekom, of refugee activist group Passop, said Home Affairs accepted the system and he had not heard of malpractice or corruption in the compiling of the list.

“It’s a pretty organised system for the time being.”

Hanekom said that it had been a tough day at the centre, with many people “frustrated and tired” after hours of queueing in the heat.

He urged Zimbabweans to keep their places in the queue instead of giving up and returning another day. Home Affairs staff were “doing their best” under trying conditions, Hanekom said.

Many in the queue cited the relaxation of Home Affairs rules as the reason for their late registration. Several weeks ago, Zimbabweans were required to present a passport to register successfully for the right to stay.

But a huge backlog led Home Affairs to accept the receipt of a passport application. Hanekom estimated that there were 5 000 people only three weeks ago who were unable to apply, but said their situation had changed.

Some Zimbabweans explained that work pressure had prevented them from applying earlier.

“Life here is expensive. Just being here (in the queue) I’m losing money,” said Trevor Mtuda, an artist from Harare.

Mtuda, who joined the queue at 4am, said that “political tensions and no development” had given him no choice but to live in South Africa.

Keniah Garanowado, a Harare mother who worked in South Africa and sent money to her children back home, insisted that she would not return to vote until the political situation in Zimbabwe improved.

“Normally I would vote for change as we are suffering. I want to vote if there’s change,” she said.

A salon worker, who gave her name only as Rose, 25, and who said she worked in Khayelitsha, arrived around 3am. She was number 282 on the list.

“I can’t say if I will be allowed to stay because they have not yet verified my receipts,” she said.

Some people in yesterday’s queue were confused about whether they had the correct papers.

Henry Rivbwe complained that he had not been able to get a work permit. “I’m not sure I’ll get it… don’t know exactly what is going on,” he said.

Hanekom said: “There is a lot of confusion, the process is under a lot of pressure.” - Cape Times

Youth beaten for insulting foreigners

2010-12-29T03:46:00.000-08:00

A BOY was beaten by bystanders on Goodwill Day after he insulted two blind Zimbabwean "artists" on the train between Cape Town and Kraaifontein.

The beggars got on the train armed with a guitar and a cup, and introduced themselves as Joseph Sephine and Ngamla Mpinza from Zimbabwe.

They played well and people gave them money. One passenger spoiled the fun by insulting them.

He said: "You are doing a sketch (play acting). You can both see. You lazy bastards. Go back to Zim and tell Mugabe to give you work. You are not getting my geld," he shouted.

"People gave you money. How did you manage to see it if you claim to be blind. Hey, makwerekwere, leave us alone. I don't buy your story."

Both men appeared blind and wore heavy sunglasses.

A visibly furious Michael Dongo from the Congo, told the boy: "Can't you see that these people are disabled. What have these people done to you to deserve this."

Punches started to fly. Other passengers joined in. The boy was pinned down and beaten badly until a woman screamed and the beating stopped.

Nopinki Sekeni said the boy deserved the beating.

"These people are old enough to be his parents and they did not do anything wrong to him to deserve such treatment," she said.

"For God's sake, can't he see that these people are really blind? It proves that this boy has no manners. Thank God we taught him a lesson."

Fumanekile Makeleni said: "We won't allow any person to be insulted by thugs because he is a foreigner. All of us are one race, which is the human race. So we will not allow anyone to violate our human rights, irrespective of where one comes from.

"This trend of using bad language to foreigners is common in South Africa. The government must make it a crime to call someone a kwerekwere. It's like calling a black South African a k*****, a coloured, Malawi or an Indian a coolie. I do not think this boy will ever insult a foreigner again after what we did to him," he said.

- Sowetan

No rest for Home Affairs officials

2010-12-22T09:43:00.000-08:00

Cape Town - Officials at Home Affairs offices are hard at work, with offices running 16-hour days, in a bid to process hundreds of Zimbabweans queuing for permits to meet the 31 December deadline.

Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said everything was going "relatively well."

"We are really trying to work hard (to resolve) the whole permitting issue, not just (for) the Zimbabweans," said Dlamini Zuma, who pointed out that Home Affairs officials were working a two-shift system which sees them only clock off at 10pm.

"Our senior managers are not going on holiday, but I think we should give them the long weekend for Christmas," she said.

Dlamini-Zuma paid a surprise visit to the Wynberg Home Affairs offices this morning to hear first-hand any complaints applicants had about the Zimbabwe Dispensation Project, which is aimed at granting Zimbabweans study, work or business permits in a bid to free up the overburdened asylum process.

Her visit is part of a series of visits by departmental officials to check up on bottlenecks at home affairs offices.

Braam Hannekom, from People against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty (Passop), believed that if the department continued to process applications at its Wynberg office as it had done yesterday - where he said 550 applications were taken - that there would be no need for an extension to the deadline.

Hannekom, who has long been calling for an extension to the deadline, added that from reports, he had gathered that the application process had been "surprisingly" free of corruption.

Dlamini Zuma said the only reports of corruption related to the process dated back to the beginning of the process where Zimbabweans were sold applications by their fellow countrymen.

By yesterday, 127 564 applications had been processed since the Zimbabwe dispensation programme's April extension, said Jackson MacKay, the Deputy Director-General responsible for immigration.

MacKay said of these, 42 191 applications had been finalised and a further 10 844 turned down.

Dlamini Zuma hastened to add that those applicants that had their application for permits rejected are given the chance to appeal these applications through a review process.

She said many applications were rejected because applicants didn't bring along the necessary supporting documentation - such as a letter from their employer, in the case where they were applying for a work permit.

She said many that applied for permits were still waiting to receive Zimbabwean passports, but Zimbabweans could still apply, as long as they brought along their passport application and the corresponding receipt.

Fingerprinting and police checks were also adding to the bottlenecks, but Dlamini Zuma said Zimbabweans could still apply and that these would be carried out later.

She said charts with portraits of each of the senior managers, along with their cell phones, had been made available at each home affairs office in a bid to solve problems members of the public may encounter when they visit offices.

Members of the public should report any office which failed to put up the wall chart.

One Zimbabwean, a former machine operator who didn't want to be identified, said he had been standing in the queue outside Wynberg home affairs for hours on end. He came to South Africa a year ago and was now working as a gardener in the city.

"(The Zimbabwe Dispensation Project) is good, but some are being rejected," he said, adding that he had only gone to apply now, with just under 10 days to the deadline. He had to wait two months to get his Zimbabwean passport.

The minister reiterated that the 31 December deadline would not be extended.

Dlamini-Zuma pointed out that the application process had already been extended, after originally running from April 2009 to April this year.

- BuaNews

Deportation crunch for Zim workers

2010-12-22T09:41:00.000-08:00

With just 12 days to go desperate Zimbabweans are battling to get their papers in order ahead of the December 31 deadline, or face deportation

Tensions are rising in queues at Home Affairs, and on Friday assault charges were laid against a security guard who allegedly manhandled refugee activist Braam Hanekom and Zimbabweans waiting in a chaotic queue outside the Bellville Home Affairs offices.

Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh, head of the refugee and migrants rights programme at Lawyers for Human Rights, said they doubted that all the hundreds of thousands of applicants could be processed in time.

“We remain concerned that the extremely short timeframes for such a large project may be used as a smokescreen for starting up large-scale deportations again.”

She was also concerned that Home Affairs had been late in telling immigrants with pending applications not to leave the country. She said hundreds had already left to be in Zimbabwe for Christmas.

Hanekom, founder of People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty, was at the Bellville offices speaking to Zimbabweans in the queues on Friday when a security guard told him not to speak to them.

“I told him I was in a public space and that I had a right to talk to them. He grabbed me and pushed me.”

Others in the queue complained of guards wanting bribes.

Hanekom said: “It was absolute chaos and there were not enough officials to deal with the large number of people… it will lead to much frustration and confusion.”

One Zimbabwean, who did not want to be named because he feared being victimised, said he was carrying his seven-month-old son when the same security guard shouted and started pushing him.

“I nearly fell. But he stopped when people shouted at him to leave me alone. Now I’m too scared to apply for my permit.”

Hanekom and the Zimbabwean laid charges of assault at Bellville police station.

The security company’s line manager, James Ketelo, said disciplinary action could be taken.

Associated Press says there are as many as 3 million Zimbabweans living and working in South Africa after fleeing the crisis in their homeland. SA authorities, who had allowed many to stay without passports or papers, announced a crackdown in September, saying that those who did not apply for legal status before December 31 would have to go home.

This has led to huge crowds at immigration offices across South Africa, with some Zimbabweans lining up for several days to apply for work or study permits.

Human rights groups complained that four months was insufficient to process the applicants.

Zimbabweans with passports merely need to apply to Home Affairs for a work permit by December 31. But those without passports first need to obtain proof that they applied. The applications cost R750.

Zimbabwean consular officials have set up desks at the Bellville Home Affairs offices for people to apply for Zimbabwean passports. Once they have a receipt proving they have applied, they can apply to South Africa for a work permit.

The asylum seekers’ document that many have is no longer valid.

The Zimbabwe Exiles Forum recently met Minister of Home Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to raise concerns about the logjams in the Zimbabwe Documentation Project (ZDP).

The registration process started months ago but there have been numerous delays. The forum’s executive director, Gabriel Shumba, said Home Affairs had received 116 000 applications so far, of which 10,000 were rejected, while 27,000 were approved. At least 79,000 people were still waiting.

Shumba said: “This deadline is not realistic but Home Affairs remain adamant about the December 31 deadline. However, people have been having serious problems with both the Zimbabwean Consulate and Home Affairs. There is tension in Zimbabwe ahead of the elections next year, and it would be a human rights tragedy to send people home where they will be easy targets to Zanu-PF intelligence. There is a perception that those living here are MDC supporters. It’s really scary.”

- Sunday Argus

Dlamini-Zuma urges Zimbabweans to sacrifice Xmas

2010-12-22T07:13:00.000-08:00

"Not going home for Christmas is a small price to pay." That's the message from Home Affairs Minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
Minister Dlamini-Zuma was addressing thousands of Zimbabweans registering for their permits at the Harrison street office in Johannesburg today. Minister Dlamini-Zuma urged all Zimbabweans to register before the 31 December deadline - even if they do not have the required documents.

Zimbabweans who fail to register for their permits on time could face deportation early next year. Dr Dlamini Zuma says: "The Zimbabweans must also be fair on us and realise that we are working and doing our best to sort out their issue and if they miss going home this Christmas it's a small scarifies."

The minister insists the deadline will not be extended. There is an estimated 1.5-million Zimbabweans in South Africa, and with less than two weeks before the deadline, many fear they are running out of time.

The worried Zimbabwean nationals say their concerns are not only whether their applications will be accepted or not, but with delays in getting necessary information from the Zimbabwean embassy, many fear they will not make it home for Christmas.

The Movement for Democratic Change’s Sibanengi Dube says: "The major challenge is actually coming from the Zimbabwean government, they fail to process the papers on time."

From September up to 17 December, more than a hundred and twenty thousand applications were received. Just over 40,000 applications had been adjudicated. Close to 84,000 applications are pending. Fraudulent documents were submitted by almost 300 people. And just under 11,000 applications were denied.

- SABC

SA rejects over 10 000 Zimbabwean dispensation applications

2010-12-22T07:12:00.000-08:00

Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma says more than 10,000 applications from Zimbabweans who are applying for dispensation have been rejected. She paid an un-announced visit to the Wynberg Home Affairs office.

Hundreds of Zimbabweans queued outside to complete their applications. The department says more than 127,000 applications have been received, while just over 42,000 have been processed.

Minister Dlamini-Zuma says there could be a variety of reasons for the rejections, which are also being reviewed. "One of the reasons used was somebody misunderstood and didn't only want a copy of the persons passport but also a copy of the person's employer."

She says the biggest challenge now is to increase staff at their offices, since the number of applications is increasing as the deadline is looming.

- SABC

The Chase of the Makwerekwere

2010-12-22T03:01:00.000-08:00

Heavy police presence creates panic

2010-12-19T09:40:00.000-08:00

JOHANNESBURG - A heavy presence of police in central Johannesburg has sent many Zimbabwean immigrants here panicking, fearing this could herald the beginning of a campaign to round up them for deportation back to Zimbabwe.

The police deployment appeared heaviest in the Hillbrow and Berea areas of Johannesburg, districts notorious for crime but also the home of the majority of Zimbabweans living in Johannesburg. “What is happening here is scary. There has been a heavy presence of police in the last few weeks. My stay here is becoming a nightmare as police openly declare they are ready to arrest undocumented Zimbabweans,” said Sikhumbuzo Ndlovu of Berea.

South Africa has given Zimbabwean immigrants up to December 31 to obtain permits to stay here or face deportation.

But the Pretoria authorities have said they will not resume deportations immediately after expiry of the deadline to give time for the home affairs department to process the tens of thousands of applications for permits submitted by immigrants.

Police authorities say increased patrols in Johannesburg and other parts of South Africa are normal to combat crime during the festive season.

But Monica Tagwireyi, a Zimbabwean living in Johannesburg, was not convinced especially because junior police officers – who have been accused of extorting money from illegal immigrants – have reportedly been publicly boasting that they will be rounding up all Zimbabweans with permits to stay in South Africa for deportation. Tagwireyi said: “I am scared as I applied for my passport but I have failed to obtain in the six we were told it would take to process them.”

- The Zimbabwean

South Africa Eases Deportation Threat Against Zimbabweans Seeking Work Permits

2010-12-16T09:38:00.000-08:00

The South African government has announced it will not deport Zimbabwean migrants who can show they have applied to work legally in the country. But it says it will not extend the deadline for applying for the permits, causing concern among civic groups that work with the migrants.

Activists working with Zimbabwean migrants have welcomed South Africa's announcement that it would not begin deporting undocumented Zimbabweans until it has finished a three month-old registration process.

But Home Affairs Minister Nkosozana Dlamini-Zuma reiterated that the migrants still must apply by December 31 . "We will not extend the deadline. That is why we are saying, bring in your form. Even if you do not have fingerprints, bring it in. Even if you do not have a passport, bring it in. So that we know you are here. And then we we will extend the process in time," he said.

The government in September announced it was ending an 18-month moratorium on deportations of undocumented Zimbabweans. At the same time it launched a program to give legal status to those who could prove they were working or studying here.

There are an estimated 1.5-million Zimbabweans in South Africa. Officials say they have received about 100,000 applications and of these 40,000 still remained to be processed.

Civic groups while welcoming the announcement said the registration process had been slow and confusing to some migrants.

Some applicants stand in line for days before being able to apply. Others have been unable to obtain necessary passports or birth certificates from the Zimbabwean embassy.

Activists say many Zimbabwean workers in remote rural areas either do not know about the process or cannot afford to travel to the cities where the program is being conducted.

Attorney Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh of Johannesburg's Lawyers for Human Rights said it is not likely that all eligible Zimbabweans would be processed in time. "The process has been a failure and the only way to remedy the situation is if the deadline is extended to allow more Zimbabweans access to the process and to be able to regularize their situation," Ramjathan-Keogh said.

Dlamini-Zuma said a meeting Tuesday with the activists had raised legitimate concerns and led to the decision to postpone any expulsions. "That is why we are saying there'll be no deportation until we have finished processing everything that we would have received including waiting for those people who are waiting for their passports," he said.

Many of the Zimbabwean migrants apply for political asylum citing political oppression and human rights abuses in their country.

The South African government says 90 percent of these people are actually economic migrants looking for jobs because of Zimbabwe's economic crisis.

The government says the economic and political climate in Zimbabwe has improved since the installation of a unity government nearly two years ago.

But Ramjathan Keogh says the power sharing agreement between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is shaky and notes that Mr. Mugabe has called for elections next year. "The situation is not improving. The national unity government, the agreement will end in February of 2011 before the elections which are scheduled in Zimbabwe. And after the end of that agreement we do not know what will happen and it is likely that we will continue to see an influx of Zimbabweans coming over the border in need of protection," Keogh said.

In addition, activists say an average of 17,000 Zimbabweans are being deported each month despite the moratorium. And they say the thousands of unemployed Zimbabweans in South Africa do not qualify for the permits. As a result, they say the crisis is likely to continue.

- VOA

Zim permit process problematic

2010-12-14T09:37:00.000-08:00

With the deadline for the Zimbabwean documentation process fast approaching, analysts believe many people will not be able to access those permits on time.

Researchers at Wits University say poor management and communication at Home Affairs have resulted in a slow process.

Thousands of Zimbabwe nationals across the country have until December 31 to apply for proper study, work and residency permits or face deportation.

While offices in KZN have experienced a few minor problems, branches in Gauteng have been so busy people have had to camp outside for days.

The university's Roni Amit says they have conducted research in that province and found the process is problematic. At least 100 000 people still have to apply.

"It's going to be a serious problem and we're very concerned about what's going to happen to these people in January and whether they'll be the start of mass deportations.

"The HA [Home Affairs] hasn't really given any reason for seizing to extend the deadline so if they're in fact serious about providing this documentation to all these people who are eligible, then there's not any reason not to extend the deadline," she said.

Congolese man stabbed in Cape Town tavern

2010-11-09T20:12:00.000-08:00

In a xenophobic attack, a Congolese man was repeatedly stabbed in a Du Noon tavern on Sunday because he refused to buy beer for a trio of South Africans.Nyangoma Etasha, 27, was lucky to escape with his life after being stabbed four times: in his head, chest and arms after his attackers told him they would show him South Africa was their country.

Shaking with shock and trying to stem the blood from his wounds, Etasha said he had been having drinks with a friend at the tavern, and when his friend left him alone in order to go to the toilet, three men at a nearby table demanded he buy them beer.

When he refused, the trio started manhandling him and searching his pockets, he said.

They told him: “iMzansi wethu. Ndizakubonia ngoku (South Africa is ours. We will show you now).”

Etasha said two of the men pulled out knives and stabbed him while the third started throwing empty beer bottles around the tavern, causing a stampede as the approximately 200 patrons rushed to exit the single door.

After attacking Etasha the men calmly walked out of the tavern. As they sauntered down the street, their clothes spattered with blood, this reporter saw residents smiling at them as they walked by.

A pool of blood could be seen beneath the table Etasha and his friend Ted Ndayesenga were sitting at. The tavern closed for two hours while it was mopped up.

Ndayesenga, who drove Etasha to Somerset Hospital for treatment, said his friend was attacked simply because he was buying “plenty of beers”.

Tavern owner Alfred Jezile condemned the attack and said he was considering introducing a system of membership cards for patrons to avoid criminals drinking in his establishment.

Milnerton police station spokesperson Daphne Dell said no stabbing incident of that nature was reported to them, but encouraged Etasha to open a case against his attackers.

— West Cape News

Fury as police round up foreigners

2010-11-06T01:53:00.000-07:00

Human rights groups have expressed their outrage at a massive crime blitz in Hillbrow this week that saw police officers round up foreign nationals, mainly Zimbabweans, while Home Affairs officials screened and fingerprinted them.

On Thursday, the 1 000-strong police squad launched dawn raids targeting hijacked buildings in Hillbrow, Berea and Yeoville, embarking on stop-and-search drills for its festive anti-crime campaign, Operation Duty Calls.

They were led by National Police Commissioner Bheki Cele and Police Minister Nathi Mthetwa and accompanied by Home Affairs officials and the SA Revenue Service.

But Gina Snyman, the head of the immigration detention project at Lawyers for Human Rights, said the operation appeared to contradict the Department of Home Affairs’s amnesty for Zimbabweans living in South Africa illegally, in place until December 31.

“The SAPS should be well be aware of this (amnesty) process. It’s high time the police engaged in real crime-combating. They have much more serious obligations, protecting all people in South Africa.

“It will only end up in more people going underground.”

The Star reported that the police stormed hijacked flats and rounded up residents, who were assessed by officials and split into separate groups, with Zimbabweans forming the bulk of the group.

Home Affairs officials screened the residents and the police loaded them into vans if they were found to be in the country illegally, or with a criminal record.

“It smacks of bad faith and is cause for serious alarm,” said Snyman. “We’ve also had alarming reports that Zimbabweans going to police stations to get information about the amnesty have been summarily arrested and charged.”

Dr Jo Vearey, a researcher at the Forced Migration Studies Programme at Wits, said such crackdowns were “entirely a media exercise feeding popular paranoia”.

“It further stigmatises groups trying to function in the city. There is positive work in Hillbrow – health interventions and social housing interventions, but those aren’t given the airtime.

“These raids aren’t useful in the long run. They’re nothing but a media circus. They create big tension in a small community… and that can trigger other problems.

“A lot of people are trying to reclaim the inner space so it can be somewhere we can all live and work.”

Mthetwa said he was disappointed at the state of Hillbrow. “We want to clean up Hillbrow and we want ordinary citizens to move into the area so they can be close to their place of employment.”

Veary said: “We’ve tried hard in our research on migration in Joburg to break down the stereotype that Hilllbrow is full of illegal activities.”

The perception remained that foreigners gathered there and engaged in drugs or sex work. “There are people who live in Hillbrow and function there like any other place in the city. It’s a residential suburb, home to families and individuals who work in the city.

“If they’re (the police are) targeting what they call hijacked buildings, then there’s quite serious issues. We know foreign migrants are discriminated against in terms of renting in the city … But they run the city, contribute to the city and live in the city.

“These inner city communities are fragile. In a space where building up trust with your community and neighbour isn’t always easy, the impact on these communities is incredibly traumatic.”

- IOL

Somalian shot dead in Khayelitsha – nothing stolen

2010-11-05T03:48:00.000-07:00

Somalians in Khayelitsha say they are wondering which one of their countrymen in the township will be killed next after Somalian shopkeeper Cyrix Man was shot on Tuesday night.Man, 23, was shot twice in the head on the street outside his shop on Endlovini Street, in Khayelitsha C-Section at about 11pm last Tuesday, and died in hospital at about 3.30am on Wednesday morning.

Man’s friend Abduul Bush said Man was shot in the back of the head and it seems he was running away from his killers when the shots were fired.

Bush said nothing was stolen from Man’s shop, which was open at the time, and only his cellphone was taken.

“These people know us, they know our opening and closing time. We been reporting cases like this to the police but they are not doing anything.”

Another Somalian living in Khayelitsha, Feleke Abula Debore said: “We are living in fear now. We are wondering who’s going to be next. We came to South Africa to survive not to die.”

Nine Somalians interviewed in Khayelitsha after the incident said they don’t know what to do because the police are not doing anything to help them.

Khayelitsha’s Somalia Retailers Association chairperson Abbi Ahmed said more than 22 Somalian’s had been killed in the past three months.

But South African resident Sandiso Ntlanganiso said it was not only Somalians who were at risk from crime in the area.

“Every one is a target especially if you working night shift or early in the morning. People cry everyday here but the police are doing nothing.” said Ntlanganiso.

He said police patrols needed to be stepped up in Khayelitsha to reduce crime.

Harare police station spokesperson Constable Nosiphiwo Mntengwane said it was “risky” for Man to be trading from his shop late at night.

She said police were investigating a case of murder. – West Cape News

Refugee: I’m afraid

2010-10-18T01:44:00.000-07:00

Barely two days after returning to Stofland from where she and about 3 000 other Zimbabweans were forced out by angry South Africans just over a year ago, 23-year-old farmworker Lister Gondo said she had been threatened.

A drunk man stopped her on her way from church on Sunday and told her she must go back to Zimbabwe.

“The municipality gave you R2 000 but you are coming here. Why don’t you go to Zimbabwe?” the man asked.

Added Gondo: “I was afraid of this drunk man.”

She returned to Stofland in her employer’s car and escorted by a police van on Friday night, watched by a crowd of local people.

Doing her laundry outside her rented house, watched by her landlord, her four-year-old daughter and a friend, Gondo appeared content.

“I don’t get afraid indoors, but when I have to walk around I’m afraid,” she said.

She planned to stay in the house until next year.

Several houses in the area were empty because owners were afraid to rent them out to Zimbabweans, said Gondo.

Since the return of a number of Zimbabweans to Stofland and Ekuphumleni in recent days, tension has again apparently risen in the informal settlements, prompting regular police patrols.

Residents said the Zimbabweans were taking a risk by coming back into their area.

“The community is not happy that (the Zimbabweans) are coming back. They are taking a big risk,” said a local who asked not to be named. She said the locals still had a “grudge” against the refugees.

However, De Doorns community leader Jerry Kolase said they were urging the locals to stay calm and not get violent. Emphasising that most residents were “totally against” reintegration of the Zimbabweans, Kolase cautioned his community, saying “fighting won’t help us resolve things”. He said community leaders would call a public meeting to discuss the developments and their pending service delivery grievances.

The Zimbabweans’ return came after the De Doorns refugee camp they had been sheltered in since the xenophobic attacks in November, 2009 was shut down yesterday.

The camp had been set up at the local rugby grounds by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Breede Valley municipality after Stofland and Ekuphumleni residents drove out 3 000 foreign nationals, mostly Zimbabweans, they accused of stealing their jobs in the farming town near Worcester.

Zimbabwean workers’ homes were demolished in the forced evictions, resulting in more than 20 local residents being arrested and charged with public violence.

However, charges against some were later dropped, leaving 12 facing charges.

Yesterday was the deadline for camp dwellers to vacate the camp and as the Cape Times arrived, all that was left was refuse and municipal workers doing the last bits of cleaning.

Government officials had battled for months to reach an agreement with the locals to allow the refugees back, but to no avail.

A breakthrough was finally made by a mediator, leading to most voluntarily vacating the camp and receiving a R1 200 settlement gratuity and free transport to Zimbabwe.

Braam Hanekom, leader of refugee rights’ organisation Passop, said he believed the communities could be united.

While many of the estimated 400 who were left in the camp at the time of the agreement were reported to have headed back home, some accepted job offers from farmers until the end of the grape farming season early next year

The rest took the risk of returning to the place they were driven out of.

- Cape Times

Mbeki calls for probe into attacks

2010-10-17T00:25:00.001-07:00

Former president Thabo Mbeki remains convinced that the 2008 violent attacks against foreigners were not motivated by xenophobia.

'If hatred of others who are different were the reason, whites would have been the targets'

If they were, he said, the majority of the victims of the attacks would have been white.

In an interview with the Sunday Times following the launch of his Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute this week, the former president said South Africa still owed the world an explanation as to what had caused the 2008 violence.

"These things took place, people were killed and all sorts of terrible things happened. And the thing surely must be stopped because it is wrong and it is bad and we have to pursue it.

"But in order to stop these kinds of attacks, we have got to understand them properly ...

"And if people just make a declaration that South Africans are xenophobic, that will lead to particular kinds of action which, I am certain, would not produce the kind of results we are looking for. Xenophobia is fear and the hatred of others who are different," Mbeki said.

And if the hatred of "others who are different" were the reason for the attack, white people would have been the obvious targets.

"When I walk down the streets of Johannesburg and this other black person approaches me, there is no way (of) my telling that they are Zimbabwean or Mozambican. There is nothing there that says 'ah, this is the enemy I must hate.'

"But if a white person comes up, they are so different.

"So I am saying that if there was xenophobia, I would expect it to be expressed against people who might stand out as being different from me and also, given our history, these are the people that oppressed us. But you don't have any evidence of racism among our people," Mbeki said.

The "root cause" of the violence that left more than 60 people dead and scores of others homeless, still needs to be investigated and accurately reported, he said.

Mbeki said preventative measures should be put in place to avoid a flare-up of such attacks in the future. But to do so, a proper diagnosis was needed in order to establish what had happened in those communities to provoke the violence.

He said because Africans on the continent had been "shocked" by the killings of foreigners in the country, an objective account from the South African government would ease the concern of our counterparts elsewhere in the world.

"I am quite sure when the continent gets this report, which will be an objective report, they would breathe a sigh of relief because there is a close attachment," Mbeki said.

"But so long as the message to the rest of the continent that these attacks took place as a manifestation of xenophobia - that message came from us. It is us who said that. But why did we say it?"

He said South Africans had a "strong sense of solidarity" with other African countries as they supported the struggle against apartheid. And to continue on this path of solidarity, South Africa needs to prove that the attacks that took place were not motivated by hate for foreigners by the locals.

"Let us get to the root causes (of) this thing and communicate it to the rest of the continent, which I am certain ... would confirm the statement that our people are not in the grip of xenophobia," Mbeki said.

- Timeslive

Gigaba: Home affairs can handle Zim permits

2010-10-06T00:57:00.000-07:00

The department of home affairs has the resources to process special amnesty permits for undocumented Zimbabwean migrants, deputy minister Malusi Gigaba said on Wednesday.

"We have more than the necessary resources to ensure that the project is completed by its deadline," Gigaba said in Pretoria.

The department had employed 354 employees nationally to administer the amnesty project and had put measures in place to increase capacity based on demand.

Due to the particularly high volume of applicants at the Johannesburg regional office, the department was re-opening an office in Market street to relieve congestion.

Gigaba said the department had weekly meetings with various Zimbabwean stakeholders to assess the status of the project, to unlock bottlenecks where necessary and to ensure that the December 31 deadline would be met.

Home affairs recently announced an amnesty for Zimbabweans who had been using fraudulent South African identity books, on condition that they hand these in at the department's regional offices before December 31.

Some human rights groups had said the deadline should be extended as the department was unable to cope with the large number of applications.

-- Sapa.

Deputy minister visits home affairs office

2010-09-29T00:53:00.000-07:00

Deputy Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba visited the home affairs office in Johannesburg on Wednesday where police had to intervene in scuffles between Zimbabwean nationals earlier this week.

Spokesperson Bayanda Mzoneli said the minister "just came to make sure the implementation of the amnesty for Zimbabwean nationals with fraudulent documents was going well".

On Tuesday, a woman collapsed when Zimbabwean nationals lining up to claim amnesty at the regional office were sprayed with a substance by a police officer.

This happened around 3pm when disorder broke out among the several hundred Zimbabwean nationals queuing at the office in Harrison Street in the Johannesburg CBD.

Mzoneli said police were forced to intervene after there was a "misunderstanding" between amnesty seekers.

The misunderstanding arose after a group of Zimbabwean nationals decided to camp outside the office on Sunday to get a head start for applications on Monday.

But police asked them to leave after writing their names on a list.

The list was given to home affairs officials on Monday morning.

"Since Monday, we've had to process the list of people from Sunday and also the people who come every day... there was a misunderstanding yesterday [Tuesday] between the people who were listed on Sunday and the people who arrived at the office on Tuesday," said Mzoneli.

"It got sort of out of hand and we had to request assistance from the police."

The office can process 135 applications a day -- excluding enquiries -- and 359 people's names appeared on the Sunday list, he said.

Mzoneli said the applications of those from the Sunday list had been processed by Wednesday.

"The Sunday people are done."

He said the deputy minister also visited the Bloemfontein office on Wednesday morning.

"The deputy minister has observed that the Bloemfontein office receives fewer numbers... so perhaps the deployment of officials should match the demand of the office.

"So we might move officials from one office to the next."

A final decision would only be made after an audit had been done of all the busy and less busy home affairs offices, Mzoneli said.

On Wednesday morning, a group of people were waiting patiently outside the Harrison Street office, some saying they had been queuing since 4.30am. The situation was calm.

--Sapa

SA permit regime stands

2010-09-23T00:58:00.000-07:00

South Africa's permit procedures will not change as a result of the special amnesty for Zimbabwean migrants, the home affairs department said on Thursday.

“We are not changing the permitting regime... This is a dispensation to assist Zimbabwean nationals. We don't want to sit in our country with this cloud on our heads,” director general Mkuseli Apleni told reporters in Pretoria.

Apleni said the process for applying for asylum and getting work and study permits would remain unchanged even with this new bilateral agreement with Zimbabwe.

Home affairs recently announced an amnesty for Zimbabweans, who had been using fraudulent South African identity books - to enable them to get the correct papers.

Zimbabweans who have held South African ID books would be issued with permits to their valid Zimbabwean passports, some for as long as years. The process started on Monday.

Apleni said a team of South African and Zimbabwean government officials would try and ensure that the documentation of that country's nationals ran smoothly.

The newly established SA-Zimbabwe task team would conduct daily visits at the department's regional offices. They would also encourage Zimbabweans to get documentation.

Acknowledging some problems since the start of the documentation process on Monday, Apleni said department officials also needed to understand what the project meant.

“We need to make sure that as a department we understand exactly what this project means. We still have some challenges with our people not understanding this and that.”

Despite the teething problems, he said they gave full support to the decision to document Zimbabweans living in South Africa.

The Movement for Democratic Change complained a few weeks ago that officials “knew nothing” about the project, as some people were apparently being turned away from regional offices.

Apleni said it was not up to officials at regional offices to turn applicants away, but the headquarters' responsibility to make that decision.

“We've instructed employees that the adjudication process is done at the headquarters. No one in any office had the right to say I will not grant you this because of this... their role is just to collect the documents and pass them on to headquarters.”

A track-and-trace system will be implemented in each office to assess how many applicants were received per day and how many were turned back.

Apleni indicated that the number of Zimbabweans making use of the opportunity was growing by the day. Figures would be released weekly, starting from next week.

Other nationals will in future benefit from this sort of amnesty.

Apleni urged Zimbabwean nationals living in South Africa illegally to heed the call to correct their documentation, adding that other nationals would in future benefit from this sort of amnesty.

MDC secretary Ngqabutho Dube said those who had already bought houses and obtained loans from banks with their South African IDs would be assisted through the stakeholders forum.

“The forum will engage with the business community to explain amnesty to them, and request them to co-operate so people can keep their property and not have them sold,” he said.

“It's critical for the MDC to ensure that no Zimbabwean national looses his/her property during this period.”

- Sapa

Joburg aims to integrate migrants

2010-09-14T10:19:00.000-07:00

A PROGRESSIVE strategy that ensures the integration of migrants in the city was being adopted by Johannesburg.

So said Executive Mayor Amos Masondo, speaking at the third Hague International Migration Workshop, at Constitution Hill on 13 August. Hosted by the City of Johannesburg, it brings together City officials, NGOs and governmental representatives to discuss ways of providing for the health and housing needs of migrants. The workshop opened on Wednesday and ends today.

Masondo said that in just under 24 months, the City had developed a support strategy for migrants.

"Local government in South Africa, including the City of Johannesburg, is committed to ensuring that all those who live within its jurisdiction and abide by its laws have a decent quality of life."

It was important that local governments focused on the challenges of migration and urban governance. "This should be so in spite of limited financial resources and sometimes even a limited management capacity," he said.

Housing and health

The number of people living in Joburg was expected to grow by some 3,5 million people in the next 25 years. South Africa's policy of migrant and refugee settlement and urban integration, rather than confinement to camps, meant that migrants competed within the generally overburdened urban housing market.

Masondo assured the gathering that the City of Johannesburg was striving to deal with its housing shortage.

"The City has embarked on a mixed-income housing programme to ensure integrated and inclusive human settlements. By the year 2011, the City would have built 50,000 houses for mixed-income groups."

In terms of health care, no formal documents would be required at clinics, resulting in free primary health care and environmental health services being available to all, he said.

Jobs

Professor Lorren Landau, the director of forced migration studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, pointed out that foreign nationals contributed to Johannesburg's economy.

"In our research, we have found that those international migrants are typically better educated and [are] likely to generate jobs for South Africans."

The challenge for the city was to rout out xenophobia, ignorance and other forms of discrimination in the public bureaucracy, the police and the private sector.

"If we are to build an inclusive and prosperous city, we must rethink how we engage with populations," he said.

- Joburg - a world class African city

End of the line for illegal Zim nationals

2010-09-02T22:48:00.000-07:00

It was announced at a Cabinet briefing yesterday that the decision was taken in order to legitimise the estimated 3 million Zimbabweans living in the country illegally, many with fake South Africa identity documents.

It will allow them time to obtain passports, work or study permits, as well as other documents that will permit them to be in the country legitimately. But if they don't get them by the end of the year, they will be sent packing.

Migration experts and NGOs have slammed the move, calling it an endorsement of "a policy of mass deportation".

Briefing journalists yesterday, government spokesman Themba Maseko said the Cabinet "had approved the proposal to end the special dispensation for Zimbabweans".

"The special dispensation that was put in place during the political crisis in Zimbabwe was to allow free movement of Zimbabweans into the country to come live, study and start businesses here without requiring a permit," he said.

"But we believe some form of stability has returned to Zimbabwe and therefore all Zimbabweans will now be treated like any other foreign nationals."

The special dispensation was introduced in April 2009, just as Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe was concluding his eight months as caretaker President.

It allowed Zimbabweans to obtain permits which granted them the right to stay in South Africa for six months, and the right to education, employment and healthcare in the country.

But the Cabinet's decision means that Zimbabweans living, working and studying in South Africa will have to apply for the necessary documentation from Zimbabwe and then apply to the South African Department of Home Affairs for work or study permits before the end of the year, or face deportation.

Maseko said there would be an amnesty for Zimbabweans who may have obtained South African identification documents fraudulently on condition that they return the fake IDs to home affairs and apply for legal documents.

Advocacy groups and immigration experts have slammed the Cabinet decision as short-sighted.

Duncan Breen, advocacy officer at the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa, said the organisation "would be extremely concerned about any policy of mass deportation".

He said a permit which allows Zimbabwean migrants more flexibility between the countries would be more ideal.

"Internationally, what would be best would be some form of permit to enable people to go backward and forward. What that does is enable a greater number of people to remain in Zimbabwe," said Breen. (Timeslive)

40 held in 3 months for xenophobia attacks

2010-08-04T10:12:00.000-07:00

Fifty-five incidents of xenophobia were recorded in the Western Cape between May 1 and July 30, with 40 arrests, says Community Safety MEC Lennit Max.

He made the announcement in the provincial legislature yesterday during a debate on the provincial government's role in addressing xenophobic violence.

Max said charges laid included arson, intimidation, attempted murder, damage to property, assault, public violence and theft or looting.

He said the areas in which incidents occurred included Delft, Philippi, Lwandle, Kraaifontein, Paarl, Paarl East, Franschhoek, Grabouw, Wellington, Da Gammaskop, Mossel Bay, Gugulethu, Langa, Atlantis and Khayelitsha.

Max said police visibility in the areas where foreigners lived and had shops had been increased.

But he seemed to contradict the DA, which has consistently accused the ANC of denialism about xenophobia.

He said four distinct categories could be defined to separate acts and attitudes towards foreigners. These were:

# House shop robberies where foreigners were victims. This was ordinary crime and certain factors made foreigners more vulnerable targets.

# Opportunistic acts of looting by criminal youth. Youth offenders had been responsible for the majority of incidents in since the World Cup.

# The impact of the rumour that foreigners would be chased away after the World Cup. "This rumour has no defined source. Opportunistic acts were committed by youths and not the supposed communities as predicted by rumour-mongers or vulnerable foreigners."

# Local shopkeepers forming associations with the intent ion of intimidating foreign competition. "Instances have been recorded whereby foreigners have been warned verbally and by letter to vacate certain areas," said Max.

The ANC's Max Ozinsky, who had asked for the debate, said the response of the provincial government to xenophobia had prolonged the suffering of victims of violence.

He said under the leadership of Premier Helen Zille, the Premier's Coordinating Forum resolved in March that: "The premier raises with the national government the urgent need for a national plan to address the legal control and management of illegal migration to South Africa which is the underlying cause of xenophobia."

Ozinsky said this was contradicted by a report on xenophobia titled "Strategic and critical analysis of government interventions to the displacement of foreign nationals in De Doorns" written by an official in the premier's office which stated that: "In many instances, at the root of the social crisis are structural issues (poverty and general under-development) and institutional challenges (lack of co-ordination amongst various role players and political or leadership factions amongst implicated and affected parties).

"There is no evidence, nor any research findings, to suggest that illegal migration is the underlying cause, or indeed a significant cause, of xenophobia or xenophobic intimidation or violence.

"In fact, it is clear that perpetrators of xenophobic violence do not usually distinguish between those legally in the country and those not. As a result, it cannot be argued that 'illegal immigration' is the primary cause of the xenophobic violence."

Zille argued that the DA had done more than the national government, despite refugees being a national and international competency. - Cape Argus

'I watched in horror but could do nothing'

2010-07-31T07:28:00.000-07:00

A Burundian refugee was beaten up in an apparent xenophobic attack on a train near Claremont station, and later died in hospital.

Police have opened a murder docket.

Albert Mugabe, 27, had boarded a train at Retreat after visiting friends. He was reportedly attacked when the train neared Claremont by a group of Xhosa-speaking people, but Metrorail was under the impression that Mugabe was attacked when he tried to rob someone.

Metrorail's Riana Scott confirmed that "an incident of attempted robbery aboard train No 0188 was reported on Thursday, July 22 at 5.40pm at Claremont Station and that the alleged assailant was taken to Groote Schuur hospital for treatment".

This version of events has been denied by Mugabe's friend, Fidel Nzayikorera, who said the claim was utter nonsense.

"He had money, he worked hard and had no family, why would he need to rob someone? It just does not make sense."

After his body lay in the Salt River Mortuary as an "unknown", Mugabe's friends found him there and identified his body.

Nzayikorera, Aimable Cyuma, Methuselah Mukenga, Alexis Nduwe and Pastor John Kadende, all friends of Mugabe, have been battling for more than a week to find answers about Mugabe's death.

They said they were informed about the attack by an acquaintance who witnessed it.

Mugabe's friends said they could see no visible signs of injury or disfigurement when they identified his body.

A car guard, Elie Nkundaniyigena from the Congo, is the only person who saw what happened in the final moments of Mugabe's life.

Speaking through an interpreter, he told Weekend Argus he had witnessed the entire incident, but fled from the carriage after the train stopped at Claremont.

Nkundaniyigena said he recognised Mugabe as he stood in the middle of the carriage chatting to other commuters, even though he did not know his name.

"There were South Africans, Zimbabweans and Malawians in the carriage. At first it appeared as if they were just talking, but then someone asked Mugabe if he could speak Xhosa, where he worked and how long he'd been in the country.

According to Nkundaniyigena Mugabe said he could speak Xhosa and that he worked as a safety officer on a boat and lived in Simon's Town.

"Close to Claremont station, the same people started grabbing Mugabe and three other foreigners who were on the same train.

"They kicked Mugabe while the other men managed to escape as soon as the train stopped. I watched in horror, but could do nothing. Everything happened so fast and because I was afraid I stayed low, hiding behind a uniformed man who was sitting next to me."

Nkundaniyigena said when he looked up Mugabe had been pushed down and someone was banging his head against the train floor.

He added that many people fled from the train at Claremont station in fear.

"The people were singing 'makwerekwere hamba, makwerekwere hamba' (get out foreigner)... I ran away without looking back and called a friend who knew the victim."

Nkundaniyigena said the incident left him traumatised and scared because he needs to catch a train to get to work.

"I now take a later train than usual to avoid full trains," he said.

Nzayikorera, a close friend of Mugabe, said after being informed about the incident he tried to retrace Mugabe's steps.

"I went to Groote Schuur hospital on Friday and the sister on duty confirmed that an unknown man was treated in Ward C14 and died the next morning. She referred me to the Salt River mortuary."

Nzayikorera said Mugabe was not a violent man and would not have been involved in crime.

Kadende said they were planning to give Mugabe a proper burial, as he had no relatives in the city.

"He will be buried at Maitland cemetery as soon as we can get the money to arrange the funeral. Nobody knows if Mugabe still has family in Burundi, but it is up to us to bring him peace."

A concerned Kadende said he could not believe that the authorities and the politicians were still in denial about xenophobia.

"Our friend is dead, he was killed for no other reason except the fact that he was a foreigner."

Claremont police spokeswoman Angie Latchman confirmed that police opened a murder docket this week.

She said: "The deceased was assaulted on July 22, at Claremont train station and taken by paramedics to Groote Schuur, where he passed away the next day."

Latchman urged anyone with information about the case to contact the investigating officer, Roger Mintoor, at Claremont police station on 072 869 9160.

Metrorail said on Friday that the matter was tabled at the Provincial Rail Crime Combating Forum this week and would remain the subject of a joint investigation between Metrorail's Protection Services Department and the Railway Police.

- Cape Argus

Shop-owner attacks: What's really going on?

2010-07-31T07:27:00.001-07:00

Today the Daily Voice can reveal the truth behind the attacks on foreigner-owned businesses on the Cape Flats.

An in-depth investigation has revealed that a prominent shebeen queen is the ringleader of an evil syndicate behind numerous attacks that have unsettled the uneasy peace between locals and foreigners.

The Daily Voice is in possession of statements from three hitmen that directly link the woman to multiple attacks on foreigners.

A source close to the investigation says the woman has managed to mobilise a small army of angry businessmen and dangerous killers.

They have the money and the guns and their sole aim is to rid the Flats of all flourishing rivals so that their own businesses can fill the gap.

The attacks started on March 21 in Luzuko near Philippi-East and spiked after the 2010 World Cup.

Two of the hitmen?s statements say the woman gave direct orders for at least two Somalis to be shot and killed and their shops torched.

The statement reads: ?I shot the first Somali in the right shoulder and was too scared to carry out the second attack.

"I gave the gun to the second hitman who shot dead Farouk Hussain on the night of March 21 in Luzuko, near Philippi-East, and I threw the petrol bomb at the spaza."

The three suspects, who are currently in Pollsmoor prison, claim the shebeen owner paid them R4 000 for killing a Somali, injuring another and burning their stock.

The three Philippi-East suspects now face charges of murder, arson and attempted murder for the attack.

While police build their case against the dangerous woman, they say they are taking no chances with their investigation.

"There are fears that by revealing the name of the shebeen queen, she might hire other hitmen to eliminate the three who are presently behind bars," the source says.

"We are aware of at least one cop who was paid
R30 000 to make a docket disappear and because of this bribery element, investigations into attacks on foreigners are classified information.

"The modus operandi in most attacks is the same, and because of this we have asked the Directorate of Public Prosecutions to centralise all the cases so that it can be brought before one magistrate."

He adds that the three men are the first solid leads cops have to help solve the attacks on foreigners.

"Cops have information that this shebeen queen had regularly met with prominent township business people who are allegedly behind the brutal violence directed at foreigners," the source says.

"It is a well-organised plan with one common purpose and that is to drive foreign-owned shops out of the townships, kill them and burn their shops so that local-owned businesses in townships can survive."

A task team is now investigating attacks in Wellington, Mbekweni, Harare, Makhaza, Philippi, Macassar, Franschhoek and Klapmuts.

The dockets of at least 13 cases under investigation are not even kept at local police level in order to stop corrupt cops from being bribed into making dockets disappear.

Provincial police spokesperson Colonel Billy Jones confirmed that criminals are behind the wave of attacks on foreigners.

"Investigations into cases indicate that criminals are behind these attacks," he says.
"A lot of suspects are behind bars and I am aware of one attack where five were busted.

"A task team works around the clock to bring an end to these attacks and those orchestrating the violence."

In the most recent case, three Somali shopkeepers narrowly escaped being burnt to death inside their small shop when their winkel was petrol-bombed in Wallacedene last week.

Two people were arrested for the attack a few days later and prominent community leaders in the area say they have no doubt it is local business people behind the attacks.

Two South African Civic Association members from the area say hitmen were hired to kill them after they spoke out against the attacks earlier this month. - Daily Voice

Officers held after Somali shopowner robbed

2010-07-28T08:03:00.000-07:00

Four police officers from the Crime Combating Unit were arrested in Cape Town on Monday night after having allegedly stolen R400 and R911 of airtime from a Somali-owned shop in Du Noon.

Speaking on Tuesday morning, shopkeeper Selman Cabdulqaadir said four men in police uniforms, driving an SAPS-marked 4x4 bakkie, robbed his elder brother's shop Maphinda's Spaza in Ingwe Street, Du Noon, at about 6pm on Monday.

He said he and his two brothers were in the shop when the men pulled up outside and, with guns on their hips, ordered them to open the security door, claiming they wanted to search for fake cigarettes.

Cabdulqaadir said when he opened the door the four men went inside the shop, closing the door behind them.

He says he and his brothers were then ordered to stand at the back of the room while they lit cigarettes of different brands, saying they were testing if they were fake.

He said "at some point" the men became aggressive and pushed them around, questioning them about their asylum-seeker or refugee documentation.

After "testing" the cigarettes they took R400 from the cash box and airtime worth R911, said Cabdulqaadir's half-brother Cabdi Hassan.

While leaving the shop, one of the men took an avocado pear, said Hassan.

"We were scared. They are supposed to protect us yet they are acting like criminals," said Cabdulqaadir.

"The thieves here do to us whatever they want, now police are doing the same."

He said as they left the shop, one of the men turned around and told them not to open the shop on Tuesday as they would return to check the validity of their Home Affairs documents, Hassan said.

Milnerton police spokesperson Warrant Officer Daphne Dell confirmed that four police officers from the CCU had been arrested on Monday night.

However, Dell was unable to say when the men would appear in court or what charges they faced. - Cape Times

Attacks on foreign shopkeepers continue

2010-07-26T05:16:00.000-07:00

Four Somali shopkeepers have been injured in an evening of explosive xenophobic violence.

Jealous rival shopkeepers allegedly set fire to a shop belonging to three of the men and shot another after warning them to leave the area.

When Manad Ali Afrah, Abdi Omar Ali and Muse Ali Maxene ignored the threat, they almost ended up paying with their lives.

A petrol bomb was tossed at their Wallacedene shop shortly before 4am on Friday while the men were asleep.

Cops say the three men couldn't find the key to their house and nearly ended up burning to death.
By the time they escaped, their arms and faces had been scorched.

A neighbour says he initially thought the victims were thugs as they raced toward his home.

"I went out and saw two people coming towards me and thought they were skollies (criminals) and then realised it's the victims," he says.

In a separate incident, cops say a fourth Somali man was shot in the shoulder and leg by people who posed as customers when they visited his shop on Thursday evening.

Kraaifontein police spokesperson Captain Gerhard Niemand says police are investigating arson and attempted murder. - Daily Voice

Attackers 'pretended to be customers'

2010-07-22T07:03:00.000-07:00

Yet another community leader has been shot at for taking a stand against xenophobic violence on the Cape Flats.

A day after South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco) member, Pasika Tyawana, told the Daily Voice about the attempt on his life, another member has been shot at.

Thelma Duda, 31, says business owners in Wallacedene and Bloekombos want her dead because she publicly declared that refugees should be allowed to stay in the country.

Thelma says two men shot at her and her family on Tuesday night, narrowly missing her and her four-year-old son Linda while they sat in their home, which is also a spaza shop.

"They fired one bullet and it passed both of us and hit the wall," she says.

"They ran away and I couldn't get a good look at them because they had hooded tops on."

Thelma, Sanco's Secretary General, recently attended a meeting in Bloekombos where she told local business people they would have her to deal with if they hurt any foreigners.

"In the other meeting on Thursday, I said the same thing but I didn't think they would hire people to shoot me," says the Wallacedene woman.

"I don't feel safe, those men pretended to be customers and they saw I was with my family and they didn't care about the five children in the house."

She says one of the shooters walked past her house in a cap on Wednesday.

"He had a gun in his hand and hid it with his sleeve, he probably came to finish his job," she says.

Kraaifontein police spokesperson Gerhard Niemand says they have opened an attempted murder docket. - Daily Voice

"This is xenophobic water"

2010-07-21T09:50:00.000-07:00

"This is xenophobic water," a woman among a group of residents quipped as Gauteng Community Safety MEC Khabisi Mosunkutu stepped over the murky waters gushing through the narrow alleys of the Kya Sand informal settlement, north-west of Joburg, which has been racked by violence.

But for a Mozambican, Fabian Ngobeni, this was not the time for jokes. Or to play.

As the MEC and his entourage moved deeper into the settlement, reassuring residents that the outbreak of violence that left many people wounded and several spaza shops looted would not recur, Ngobeni escorted his wife out of the area, heading back to Mozambique.

"My wife is scared, so she's going back home. She has only been here for four months and she insisted that she wanted to leave," said Ngobeni.

On Monday night, the young couple were forced to take cover underneath their bed as a rowdy mob tore down their neighbour's shack and hacked the occupants with weapons.

Unconfirmed reports that a woman had been gang-raped during Monday's attacks had also reached the couple. The presence of the police did not reassure them.

"I don't want this to happen to my wife. I was here in 2008 (during the previous xenophobic violence) and I don't want my wife to die," Ngobeni said.

Mosunkutu tried to calm the residents, still jittery from Monday night's violence. Most residents said the relative peace in the settlement was only temporary, with fears of more attacks mounting.

Most called on the government to deploy the army, claiming the police were "too soft and friendly".

Among them was Marcia Mocheku, from Marble Hall, Limpopo, who said she narrowly escaped death while a marauding mob broke into shacks belonging to her neighbours and attacked them.

To avoid the attacks, Mocheku said she had to pretend there was nobody inside her shack by removing the padlock outside the door and leaving the chain dangling.

"I just lay there quietly, holding my breath and making sure I didn't cough," she said.

The narrow path along her shack was splattered with blood - a stark reminder of Monday night's vicious attacks.

The police commander for Honeydew, Major-General Oswald Reddy, said that of the 11 attacks reported, five involved South Africans, four Zimbabweans and two Mozambicans.

As darkness fell on Tuesday, about 15 vehicles from the army drove into the area.

Mosunkutu and his Housing and Local Government counterpart, Kgaogelo Lekgoro, were quick to dismiss xenophobia as the reason behind the attacks.

"This is pure criminal activities. Our assessment of the situation is clear, and no such thing (as xenophobia) exists here. Not a trace," Mosunkutu said.

He added the government would consider the delivery of services such as electricity in the area as part of a plan to counter the outbreak of violence.

"What I've seen here is thugs robbing residents. They are doing it against the backdrop of xenophobia, but it's pure thuggery. It's totally coincidental that the victims happened to be foreigners," Lekgoro said.

At least 10 suspects were arrested on Tuesday after tip-offs from residents.

- The Star

Community shuns anti-xenophobia drive

2010-07-21T09:47:00.000-07:00

An anti-xenophobia initiative got off to a rocky start when residents in Dunoon, where the programme was launched, refused to sign a pledge condemning attacks on foreigners.

Unite As One, a collaboration between four NGOs - the Black Sash, the Scalibrini Centre, People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty (Passop) and Sonke - aims to collect one million signatures in time for African Human Rights Day on October 17. The pledge is not only to be tolerant of all Africans, but also to "prevent any acts of xenophobia - intolerance, intimidation or violence; and to report to the police if any person violates the rights or safety of another".

Dunoon was chosen as the site of the campaign's launch because of its role as the epicentre of xenophobic violence in 2008. The press were initially told that volunteers would gather signatures in Dunoon after the press conference. But it soon became clear that locals had not been informed, and were not receptive to the programme's goals.

"The people are calm now," said Sarah Gwele, a volunteer for the community organisation South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco). "If you get them started, if you mention the name xenophobia, it's gonna go boom," she said.

Gwele lives in Dunoon with her two children and her husband, who is from Namibia.

"That's why I'm scared," she said.

Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cape Town Stephen Breslin and Deputy Police Commissioner Nathi Dladla were among the first to sign the petition, which volunteers will distribute to schools and churches throughout the country. People can also sign it online.

Even though he signed the petition, Dladla dismissed recent reports of xenophobic attacks as "just rumours".

"We haven't received any cases reported to police that are xenophobic per se," he said.

But a crowd of women standing across the street from where the press conference was held were not interested in signing anything protecting them. "They never signed anything to come into this country," said one woman.

Passop's Braam Hanekom was rebuffed when he tried to talk to the women.

"At the end of the day, we're not expecting everyone to sign," he said, "but they haven't been engaged yet."

The SA National Civics Organisation's (Sanco) Sam Ndzunga agreed, pointing to the widespread support of Ghana during the World Cup as evidence that Africans could unite.

Black Sash programme manager Nyembezi Nkosikhulule said Unite As One was not just about signing a piece of paper, but about committing to action.

"We must dispel intolerance and ignorance," he said. - Cape Argus

Xenophobia Watch - IOL Gallery

2010-07-20T06:28:00.000-07:00

About ten people were arrested on Tuesday morning in connection with Monday night's violent clashes at the Kya Sands informal settlement near Honeydew. The attacks left five people - four of whom were foreign nationals - wounded.

There was a heavy contingency of police officers who moved from house to house and conducted stop-and-searches, looking for illegal weapons and drugs in the area. Police also questioned residents for information about instigators of the violence.

Residents stood in groups discussing the aftermath of Monday night's violence that left several spaza shops looted.

Most business owners - especially foreigners - and residents said they were now fearing for their lives. They called on government to deploy the army, saying the police did not seem capable of protecting them as the clashes took place while they were patrolling. - IOL

Heavy police presence amid xenophobic clashes

2010-07-19T23:50:00.000-07:00

Xenophobic clashes broke out in Kya Sands late on Monday night and during the early hours of Tuesday morning as police have moved in and are maintaining a heavy, watchful presence.

"We don't have all the details yet, and I can only confirm that there definitely were some attacks.

"We're still sketchy on exactly how many and we're busy investigating the motives," said Brigadier Govindsamy Mariemuthoo, police spokesman for the province.

"This kind of thing starts up late at night and then quietens down. It seems everything is calm but tense in the area this morning."

Clashes broke out in the informal settlement at about 10.45pm on Monday, possibly sparked by a robbery deep inside the settlement in northern Johannesburg.

At least five people were wounded on Monday night - four of them foreigners and one a South African whose screams that he was not a foreigner were not heeded by the mob who attacked him and left him with a massive gash on the back of his head.

Eyewitness News reporter Alex Eliseev said running battles took place throughout the night until calm eventually prevailed from about 1am.

He said a heavy police presence, a patrolling nyala and an overhead helicopter did much to ensure that there were no more violent outbreaks.

Two injured men were pulled out of the area by paramedics after they sustained deep cuts to their heads. One of them described having been attacked with an axe.

A woman and her partner tried to outrun an angry mob of about 20 South Africans. She fell and was kicked as she lay on the ground before being wrapped in a blanket and carried to safety by her partner. She was taken to hospital for treatment.

The South African man who was injured told how an angry mob had asked him where he was from and then attacked him before he could respond. He was also taken to hospital with a deep head wound.

Mariemuthoo has maintained the consistent police line that the attacks were not necessarily motivated by xenophobia and that a criminal motive was also under investigation.

Local residents were said to be jealous of the success of informal businesses established by foreigners and were believed to be behind much of the looting that had taken place. - IOL

Somali teen murdered at shop

2010-07-19T10:15:00.000-07:00

A Somali teenager was killed outside a shop on Sweet Home Farm near Nyanga on Monday.

Omar Haji Mohamud, 19, who was staying with friends and helping at the Madiba Shop, a spaza shop, was killed at about 7am.

Nyanga police Captain Ntomboxolo Sitshitshi said Mohamud had been confronted by two people who demanded that he open the security gate to the shop. "While he was searching for the key, the suspects fired a shot at him through the gate, fatally wounding him in the face."

The two ran away.

Mahad Omar Abdi, a mediator for the Somali Crisis Group based in Bellville, said the shooters took nothing.

Community leader Sithembele Forest Ndathane said residents had been working with police since rumours of xenophobic violence started.

Anybody with information can call the Nyanga police station at 021 380 3320/3376 or Crime Stop at 08600 10111. - Cape Argus

Cops to 'stamp out xenophobia myths'

2010-07-16T00:24:00.000-07:00

Police have vowed to "smoke" anyone committing crime or spreading rumours of violence.

This promise came as the government and law enforcers yesterday said they would not allow anyone, especially criminals, to rob South Africa of its World Cup glory by running xenophobic smear campaigns against the country.

"There are no such things. There are a few criminal acts perpetuated by young children tasked to loot the shops of business owners' competitors," said a visibly irritated national police commissioner, General Bheki Cele.

"Those fleeing this so-called xenophobic violence are seasonal workers who are leaving one province for another as well as those returning home across our borders after watching a successful World Cup."

Cele and Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa were in Pretoria yesterday at a briefing on World Cup issues.

Asked if police were concerned about the potential flare-up of xenophobic violence, Cele and Mthethwa said they were not.

"What we are worried about are those peddling these rumours, which have the potential to wreak havoc by becoming a reality if left unchecked.

"South Africans are peace-loving citizens who, over the past month, welcomed 3.1 million foreigners to our shores, none of whom were hurt in any so-called xenophobic incident.

"We are concerned about these rumours because people, especially criminals, have ulterior motives, when they spread them. They want to commit common crimes using xenophobic violence to cloak their intentions.

"Those who commit these crimes are pure criminals and that is all, nothing more and nothing less," said Cele.

Mthethwa, who tried to play down the looting of foreigners' shops in the Western Cape, said: "South Africa is not a Banana Republic. We have law enforcement agencies and various organisations which will do everything in their power to help dispel these rumours.

"We are not denying that there is crime in South Africa, but like all other crimes, we will deal with it and will continue to arrest and 'smoke' those who commit crime," said Mthethwa, in reference to the government's new aggressive strategy to stop the spreading of rumours about xenophobia.

Mthethwa said the strategy would include education campaigns and social development.

"The success of this strategy depends not only on national government, but also provinces, which must stop playing political football and come up with positive pro-active measures on what they plan on doing to stop the spreading of these xenophobic myths and rumours."

The government "has never and will never take people's lives and safety for granted. We will do everything in our power to protect people".

Asked who was behind the so-called smear campaigns and their motives, Mthethwa said: "Some of those doing it are doing so for economic reasons, while others who are pushing the rumours include some international newspapers who, even before our hosting of the World Cup, tried to discredit South Africa.

"We are calling on all South Africans to stop peddling this hysteria and for everyone, including the media, to stamp out these rumours once and for all."

- Pretoria News

Zuma calls for isolation of criminal elements in xenophobic threats

2010-07-16T00:22:00.000-07:00

The President of the Republic of South Africa Jacob Zuma has finally come to the party by realising that indeed not everyone in the family has been making nice with the guests.

Zuma appealed for calm yesterday and urged foreign nationals who were threatened to go to the police and thereby isolate the criminal elements making these threats.

“Let us isolate all elements who may have sinister agendas, who may want to create havoc and sow pain and destruction in communities, especially foreign nationals residing in our country,” he said.

The president had previously dismissed claims of imminent xenophobic violence but has received increasing pressure from other arms within government as well the Movement for Democratic Change, a coalition movement within Zimbabwe that has branches in South Africa. The MDC was urging prevention before cure in this situation.

Government has grown concerned about reports that some foreign nationals “may be fleeing the country due to fears of possible xenophobic attacks”.

Reports say the Jesuit Refugee Services centre in Johannesburg said it was assisting dozens of mainly Somali and Ethiopian traders who were closing their businesses and taking refuge at the centre each night for fear of being attacked while they slept.

On Tuesday, the South African Institute for Race Relations urged the government and African National Congress (ANC) leaders to speak out and change negative perceptions that many black South Africans had about African immigrants.

Meanwhile last week, police minister and chairman of the inter-ministerial committee on xenophobia Nathi Mthethwa said that the threats were the latest “hysteria” that sought to discredit SA’s successful hosting of the World Cup.

Zuma has also urged the policing services in South Africa to identify the “hooligans” who are threatening violence against foreign nationals and detain them quickly.

The government has in the past couple of days blamed the media for distorting incidents into a xenophobic context. It is a relief to see the ones in charge of the country rise up and say 'no' instead of playing the blame game.

- newstime

Minister blithely dismisses reports of Xenophobia

2010-07-15T08:56:00.001-07:00

Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa today re-iterated that the recent violence in the Western Cape was criminals using the fear over xenophobia to further their dishonest aims.

Mthethwa told a media briefing in Pretoria today that “Xenophobia is not going to happen. I call on people and the media not to be part of peddling this hysteria of a possible outbreak...There is no such systematic thing as xenophobia in the country”.

He said the persistent talk of a looming xenophobic violence epidemic was talk that some hoped would be self-fulfilling.

Police Commissioner Bheki Cele joined in, noting that there had been a single incident just before the world cup where 11 buses carrying Zimbabweans came into the country but escaped media mention. He contrasted this with the reporting of virtually every single movement of foreigners out of the country.

Mthethwa insisted that government was taking the threats of xenophobia seriously but warned the media and the public of the dangers of ill-informed speculation. (Newstime)

Xenophobic attacks 'good for business'

2010-07-15T08:01:00.001-07:00

Cross-border transport operators are cashing in on growing fears of renewed xenophobic attacks in South Africa, Zimbabwe's Herald online reported on Thursday.

Transporters said business was brisk with Zimbabweans based in South Africa taking their valuables back home.

The operators were charging R300 for travellers with passports and R1000 for those without from Beitbridge to Bulawayo. To carry household property such as refrigerators and stoves, they charged R1000.

One transporter, who identified himself only as "Bra Joe" said he made about R15,000 last week and the number of trips had increased in the past two months.

The publication reported that although an official at the Beitbridge border post said some travellers cited xenophobia as their reason for leaving South Africa, most people were "ordinary travellers" and blamed the media for fuelling xenophobia fears without proof.

Political parties, the government and civil society groups in South Africa are at odds over whether xenophobia would resurface as it did in 2008, when at least 62 people were killed.

- Sapa

Residents urge foreigners to return

2010-07-15T07:59:00.000-07:00

The provincial government departments assisting foreigners who fled to safety in the Cape Winelands say a number of them have returned to the areas they left.

On Wednesday provincial government department spokesperson, Daniella Ebenezer said only 140 of the 250 foreigners who were taken to Antoniesvlei Hall in Wellington, remained there. About 110 people who were brought to the hall this week have returned to their communities.

On Sunday night, while the world watched the World Cup final, hundreds of foreigners who have businesses in the Mbekweni informal settlement in Paarl and the New Rest settlement in Wellington were escorted to safety by police when local residents began looting their shops.

The foreigners were taken to Antoniesvlei resort and were housed in a hall. But the SA National Civic Organisation (Sanco) secretary-general for the Boland area Peboho Majela, said local residents have called for the foreigners to return.

He said a "well attended" community meeting was held on Tuesday night, where residents insisted the foreigners come back to the community.

"Not a single member was doubting whether to bring back the foreigners," he said.

He said that Sanco members in the area were planning to recruit foreigners in these areas on street committees they hoped to form.

"We're trying to convince them to come back and we're coming with a different position. We are going to adopt some of the foreigners on our committees, when we revive the street committees," he said.

Provincial police spokesperson Captain Frederick van Wyk, said on Wednesday that so far the area was reported to have been "quiet" after Sunday night. He said police would maintain "a visible presence" in the affected areas.

Meanwhile, Ebenezer said the eight foreigners who were staying at a church in Hanover Park had returned to the areas from which they fled.

Also, the 25 displaced people staying at a school in Delft remain and 49 are being housed in a church in Franschhoek.

Ebenezer said there were also no more foreigners along the N1 or at the Huguenot tunnel, where they had been the past few weeks, hoping to catch a ride out of the Western Cape.

Civic organisations on Wednesday called on government to recognise that xenophobic attacks were happening in the Western Cape. The plea came a few days after the Cape Argus reported president Jacob Zuma saying that the threats of an outbreak of xenophobic violence in South Africa were still rumours.

The Social Justice Coalition, Equal Education and the Treatment Action Campaign released a statement criticising government's failure to acknowledge the xenophobic nature of the recent attacks on foreigners.

"In our view, it appears that senior police and the intelligence services have failed to properly brief President Zuma and the cabinet. Many senior officials appear reluctant to use the term "xenophobia" in the hope that this will result in violence subsiding."

The three organisations have been holding workshops in Makhaza in Khayelitsha since last month's attacks on at least three Somali-owned shops in the area.

"We have been engaging with broader civil society networks and forums, but our joint work has been limited to Khayelitsha," they said.

"During this work it was found that fear of attacks after the World Cup was indeed very prevalent (among both locals and immigrants), and that many immigrants were being directly and indirectly threatened and intimidated."

The group said it found that in most cases where foreigners were attacked in Khayelitsha police responded quickly and effectively "under difficult conditions".

Meanwhile the Western Cape Religious Leaders Forum, under the chairmanship of Dr Thabo Makgoba, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, held a special consultative forum to discuss the recent attacks on foreigners. It urged the police to work with local communities in isolating those who were responsible.

- Cape Argus

2010-07-15T07:58:00.000-07:00

Attacks are about business not hatred: cops

2010-07-15T07:54:00.000-07:00

Cops are saying that several attacks on foreigners in rural areas are related to fights over business territory and not xenophobia.

A Somali shopowner's house was petrol-bombed in Grabouw over the past weekend.

In another incident, cops are looking for a large number of suspects who robbed a Somali-owned shop in the area of R4 000 in cash as well as cigarettes and airtime on Monday.

But cop sources say even though the attacks were aimed at foreigners, they suspect that it might actually be fights over business territory and not related to xenophobic attacks which have flared up across the Western Cape in the past week.

In a similar incident in Worcester last week, two Somali men died and two others were wounded when their Avian Park tuck shop was attacked.

Police spokesperson Captain Mzikayise Moloi says no arrests have been made.

Meanwhile, De Doorns Police Station Commander Desmond van der Westhuizen says the area that was torn apart by attacks on Zimbabweans last year is relatively quiet.

"We have had no such incidents and we hope it stays that way," he says. - Daily Voice

Does Denying the Bark Mean the Dog Won't Bite?

2010-07-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

Johannesburg, South Africa — For the past three months civil society organisations, academics and even some government officials have been warning that a new round of xenophobic attacks are coming soon after the World Cup has ended. Over the last two weeks, many of these same people have seen their world cup fever give way to a feverish effort to prevent (or at least prepare for) the forthcoming melee. No one has been readying themselves more fervently than migrants, many of whom have started packing and making their way to sites of safety either in South Africa or beyond its borders. Some have heard the dog barking and, remembering the brutal attacks of May 2008, fear its mortal bite.

Following last week’s meeting of the inter-ministerial committee dedicated to addressing the expected attacks, senior government officials have finally developed a coordinated, if somewhat ambivalent, approach to the relapse of xenophobic violence. Along with the firm (if fallacious) statements that South Africa is not a banana republic where people can murder with impunity –officials have been denying that the threats should be taken seriously. (South Africa may not be a banana republic, but only two of more than 60 murders during the 2008 attacks resulted in criminal conviction).

Just this week newspapers quoted President Zuma’s irresolute response: "I'm not certain whether there have been threats of xenophobia. I know that there have been rumours that have been reported." As of yet, he continued, there was no “concrete evidence” of attacks. The hundreds of Zimbabweans and others who are fleeing hostile communities are, if we are to believe what officials tell us, simply seasonal farm workers returning home. The attacks, which have already displaced scores of people to police stations in the Western Cape, are simply opportunistic criminality ‘disguised’ as xenophobia.

The Minister and Deputy Ministers of Police and others have accused ‘prophets of doom’ and ‘afropessimists’ of trying to rob South Africa and, presumably, the ANC of its World Cup glory by talking about xenophobia. This amounts to holding the long-term national security of the country to ransom for the short-term international reputation gained from wondrously hosting an athletic spectacle. The denialist rhetoric also belies the very real investment the government is making in police and army deployments in communities to prevent outbreaks or to respond to violence. Perhaps we should judge the government’s response by its actions rather than its words: in that case there is indeed much to commend and many lessons which have clearly been learned from 2008.

However, the words of senior politicians do have significant impacts. Stating that the attacks are ‘mere rumours’ or ‘mere crime’ is worrying on a number of levels. Most obviously, it reveals government leaders who are either deeply out of touch with their own intelligence and police services, or who are willing to publically prevaricate about acute threats to the security of the country’s residents. Police and intelligence services have been warning of rising tensions and the seriousness of threats since early in the year, well before any public or media discussions which are now accused of ‘creating’ or ‘fuelling’ violence. At what point do distributing threatening pamphlets, regular verbal threats in communities (some made openly into TV cameras and to newspaper journalists), and community meetings in which people outline their plans to get rid of foreigners constitute more than a rumour? Whatever the reasons for their response, all South African residents will be the losers.

What we have seen over the past few weeks is not only a government unwilling to acknowledge the threat of xenophobic violence, but an administration that seeks to overtly deny others the possibility of raising the warning flag. Claims that hateful murder are simply criminal opportunisms both echoes apartheid era claims that township violence was anything but political and distracts us from the issue at hand. To be sure, in South African law, any verbal threat or physical attack on life or dignity is a crime. Recognising this begs the question why there has not been a stronger and much earlier response from the security agencies. It seems that since the attacks are ‘merely’ criminal, our Minister of Police is suggesting that ‘normal’ criminality is not a problem or a priority.

Moreover, by denying ‘xenophobia’ as a motivation, the Inter-Ministerial Committee does not acknowledge and cannot explain why specific groups are targeted. Labelling an attack xenophobically motivated does not mean that all South Africans are consumed by bigotry and hatred. However, some people regularly single out specific groups for abuse, explicitly couching their threats in discriminatory language. If shouts of “you Makwerekwere get out” are, indeed, disguising’ alternative motivations, as Mthethwa suggests, local political and business interests are playing on existing sentiments and anger. These attacks may be criminal, but they ignore the tools - hatred, bigotry, and a willingness to turn to violence - than enable them. By shifting the blame for violence to purportedly ’unpatriotic’ or ‘afropessimist’ (read racist) individuals, media outlets, and institutions that speak openly about the violence, the Minister is taking aim at the messengers, not the perpetrators. This is surely a dangerous trend for a democratic country that is at least formally committed to a culture of open and public debate.

If we are lucky enough to avoid the conflagrations that caught hold in 2008, let us not forget that the dog has already bit. Just this week, a Ghanaian was shot down in the streets of Khayelitsha, flying straight in the face of the heart warming pan-African solidarity mustered during the World Cup. A few days earlier, passengers shouting insults against foreigners threw a Zimbabwean out of a moving train. How is that ‘opportunistic crime’? Moreover, hundreds if not thousands of people have fled their homes in the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng out of fear. Such uprooting comes at significant costs to those on the run and to South Africa as a whole, illustrating a lack of confidence in the state’s ability to protect its residents. As much as the government deserves to bask in its World Cup victory, the international and continental media are already taking notice.

Which is worse for the country: violence and fear, or a government ready to deny that ethnic cleansing is being attempted on its watch? While the Minister of Police is right that the rest of the world is also grappling with the tensions of living with diversity, this does not reduce the urgency of finding locally appropriate ways of living with difference here. Denying that ethnic, national and other divisions exist will not help us in our search.

The lives and livelihoods of foreigners and other outsiders are now at risk. This should alarm us. What should worry us more are threats to political credibility and an open society where elected officials heed warnings, accurately identify and diagnose problems and treat the population - regardless of origins - with respect and provide them the security they deserve.

Landau and Polzer are Researchers with the Forced Migration Studies Programme at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa

- allAfrica.com

NGOs call on Zuma to recognise xenophobia

2010-07-14T15:13:00.000-07:00

Officials seemed to be avoiding use of the word xenophobia in the hope that the violence in the Western Cape would subside, three non-governmental organisations (NGOs) charged.

"Many senior officials appear reluctant to use the term 'xenophobia' in the hope that this will result in violence subsiding"

"We call on local, provincial and national government to immediately recognise that individuals around Cape Town and the Western Cape are being targeted based on their nationality," they said in a statement.

The NGOs - the Social Justice Coalition, Equal Education and the Treatment Action Campaign - said they had learned of at least 15 incidents of "xenophobic criminal activity" in Khayelitsha alone since Sunday.

Most entailed looting of Somali-owned shops by roving gangs ranging from ten to 30 individuals.

A string of other incidents and threats had been reported from surrounding areas and towns.

They said Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa had criticised what he called "this alarmist phobia", while President Jacob Zuma had said he was "not certain whether there have been threats of xenophobia".

"It appears that senior police and the intelligence services have failed to properly brief president Zuma and the Cabinet," the NGOs said.

"Many senior officials appear reluctant to use the term 'xenophobia' in the hope that this will result in violence subsiding."

They called on Zuma to lead and support efforts to prevent attacks on people from other African countries.

They said it was inconsequential to question whether the acts were being perpetrated out of hate or a desire to opportunistically commit criminal acts.

"None of this detracts from the fact that a specific group of people is being targeted, and are very much in need of particular protection." - SAPA

Local xenophobes still plague foreigners

2010-07-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

On Monday night 1 000 Somalis congregated in Bellville after fleeing the townships and informal settlements where they operate shops and vendor stalls. If they could find sleep-over accommodation they would. If not, they said, they would sleep in the streets.

Monday was the coldest night of the year so far, but it was worth it to get out of the informal settlements around Cape Town where they have established businesses and homes.

Many of the Somali refugees reported they had been driven out of their homes in the course of the day by mobs of residents wielding sticks, throwing stones and hurling xenophobic abuse. Having driven the owners out, the mobs then looted the Somali-owned businesses.

On the same day, President Jacob Zuma told journalists in Joburg that no concrete evidence had yet come to light of an outbreak of xenophobic violence in South Africa.

In this, Zuma was echoing the South African Police Service, which - while mobilising to secure the townships and informal settlements - continues to treat crimes against foreigners as random offences.

The SAPS in the Western Cape has yet to establish a specialised investigations task team or unit to investigate such crimes against foreigners, and has reportedly also not yet briefed crime intelligence officers to get to the bottom of what is happening in the informal settlements.

What the police have done is to circulate a list of cellphone numbers of detectives or sector heads, to those affected, in the event that any incidents occur.

Thousands of Zimbabwean refugees have fled Cape Town's informal settlements in the past 10 days. Hundreds, with whatever possessions they have managed to take with them, line the N1 highway around truck stops, seeking transport back to the Zimbabwe from which they earlier fled.

Many others have just moved further afield, hoping to get out of the eye of the xenophobic storm in more remote or rural areas, the Cape Argus has learnt.

In the past two days groups of Zimbabweans have collected in Ceres and the depressed fishing town of Vredenburg.

But it is Somalis who occupy the unenviable position of being South African xenophobes' victims of choice. As Arabs in predominantly black areas they look different, they dress differently and they have different manners and customs. But it is appears to be mainly because they are traders and business people that they are targeted.

Somali nationals interviewed by the Cape Argus cited jealousy on the part of local business people as fomenting the hostility they experienced, but in general said that it was criminals and tsotsis - many acting at the behest of community leaders - who were directly responsible for robbing and terrorising them.

Last week four young people from the settlement of Bloekombos outside Kraaifontein, along with two local shopkeepers, were in the magistrate's court in Blue Downs, charged with attacks on local Somali traders. According to the State, the youths were hired by the local businessmen to kill Somali shopkeepers - at R60 a head, with a couple of straws of the drug tik thrown in. The businessmen, moreover, allegedly provided firearms to the youths - firearms which in terms of the alleged agreement would be returned after the killings were done.

The young people were, however, apprehended before the alleged hit could take place, and are charged only with robbery and conspiracy to murder. Legal fees for the businessmen accused are reportedly being paid by subscription among sympathetic business associates from the area.

Several Somalis also told the Cape Argus of alleged extortion and harassment by either police or people posing as police in the weeks leading to the recent looting experiences. In one such incident an Ethiopian, connected to the Somali networks, said his Dunoon business was robbed two weeks ago allegedly by people dressed in police uniforms driving a white unmarked sedan.

Claiming they were looking for drugs, the shopkeeper's assailants allegedly proceeded to empty out his cash drawer, as well as help themselves to stock, before binding him with cable ties and dumping him on the N7 highway.

Several Somalis in Dunoon are renting containers from unnamed local leaders that were seized from them in the 2008 cycles of xenophobic violence.

Though the initial wave of Somali immigration into South Africa, around the turn of the millennium, saw refugees established mainly in trading stalls in designated trader areas in Cape Town like Greenmarket Square and the Parade, from around the middle of the decade

Somali immigrants, having identified a market, increasingly moved into peri-urban and rural areas to set up business. They account for most of the retail trade in informal settlements around the province.

"We didn't come here looking to start businesses; we came here to flee the war in our country. But when we arrived here, we found no official help. We don't even have a Somali ambassador. We started small businesses to help feed ourselves and our families," said Mohammed Fatoule, spokesman for the Somali Retailers' Association.

To an extent this is attributable to a steep climb in numbers of Somalis in South Africa - largely because of South Africa's relatively liberal refugee laws. In terms of the Refugee Act, Somalis, because their country is internationally written off as a "failed state", are automatically granted refugee status and residence in South Africa.

What has placed them especially at risk, however, in the poverty-stricken informal settlements is the fact that, by and large, Somalis have been markedly successful in business.

Like many immigrant communities, they entered South Africa not as individuals or families, but in communities. In most cases immigration has been organised around the central figure of a maulana or other local religious leader. Such figures have tended to guarantee social cohesion, and to promote the pooling of resources - usually held in trust by the religious leader himself in order to buy goods in bulk while selling on the ground.

It is also known in the townships and the informal settlements that most Somalis do not - either for religious reasons or because their residence permits have not been finalised - operate bank accounts. Instead, they keep their money on their business premises or at home. Fatoule said at least 50 shops were looted and evacuated in the course of Monday night, while their owners took refuge in Bellville.

- Cape Argus

Scared foreigners to go back

2010-07-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

Despite still feeling scared, many Somalis forced from informal settlements may head back to their homes on Thursday if there were no more threats.

"I've been in contact with people in Delft, Du Noon, Khayelitsha, Nyanga and other places and they've said we should come back. They say because our shops aren't there they must travel far and pay more money. The communities say they will protect us," Mahad Omar Abdi, chairman of the Somali Crisis Group said on Wednesday.

Since Sunday scores of foreigners from informal settlements around the province left their homes after receiving threats.

- Cape Times / IOL

Body found with penis hacked off

2010-07-14T05:25:00.000-07:00

A Malawian man has been found dead in bushes with his penis hacked off.

Peter Shavula was last seen alive on Sunday evening during the World Cup final at a shebeen in Samora Machel.

But on Monday evening, his mutilated and naked body was found in bushes in the area with deep stab injuries to his neck and chest, and a piece of unidentified flesh was found a few metres from his corpse.

Police say the 33-year-old man's girlfriend last saw him with two friends before his body was found in the bushes used as a toilet by locals.

Peter's friend Bahati Phiri, 30, said he was worried when the young man didn't make it home on Sunday night.

"I helped to look for him because he had never gone missing before," he said.

"His girlfriend was approached by people who saw Peter's body in the bushes.

"I don't know if it was a xenophobic attack because no one else has been beaten or threatened in our area."

But when the Daily Voice visited the scene at around 6.30pm on Monday night, locals indicated that the attack was linked to the latest surge in xenophobic violence.

Nyanga police spokeswoman Ntomboxolo Sitshitshi said the incident was being investigated as a random murder and not an attack on foreign nationals.

Anyone with information is asked to call Nyanga cops at 021 380 3320 or Crimestop on 08600 10111. - Daily Voice

Foreigners 'chased like dogs'

2010-07-13T23:50:00.000-07:00

Foreigners forced from informal settlements around the province are still too scared to return to their homes because they fear being attacked again.

"I'm not going back. I don't care if the police are there. I am scared. They've torn down my shop and my brothers who have gone back were threatened again. We will wait - maybe until next week," Abduragman Alikar, a Somali who ran a shop in Khayelitsha, said on Tuesday.

On Sunday and Monday scores of foreigners left a number of informal settlements around the province after being threatened. Some had had their shops looted.

Late on Monday in Nyanga fears of attacks against foreigners were further fuelled when the body of a 33-year-old Malawian, Peter Chavura, was discovered.

He had been murdered and his genitals cut off.

Nyanga police station spokeswoman Ntomboxolo Sitshitshi said the murder was not xenophobia-related.

She said Chavura had been drinking with his friends on Sunday at a shebeen in Samora Machel.

That was where his girlfriend last saw him but on Monday a resident told her his body had been discovered in bushes in the area.

Pictures of the scene show his genitals on grass near his body.

In another section of Nyanga late on Monday another Malawian man, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisal, said he was kicked out his house after locals stoned it, then broke down the front door, before chasing him and his family out.

The Malawian said five of his friends had also been chased out the area. His employer, who did not want to be named for fear of jeopardising him, said the man was now no longer at his home and was staying with friends.

On Tuesday in Nyanga, foreign-owned shops were
either empty or locked up.

Franschhoek police station spokeswoman Marize Papier said all the foreign-owned shops in the area were also closed on Tuesday following a day of looting.

She said 53 foreigners were staying in a church there and would possibly go back home within the next few days.

In Grabouw, resident Rochelle Wegner also said a
number of Somali- and Nigerian-owned shops had
been looted and a number of foreigners had left the area.

Along the N1 on Tuesday near the Huguenot Tunnel, more than 20 Zimbabweans were waiting, trying to get transport out the province.

They had been at the roadside since the weekend
when many had been kicked out of informal settlements.

"It's the xenophobia that's forcing us away. I?m afraid, my friend. We came here on Sunday after they chased us out of Mbekweni (in Paarl).

"The people from there chased us like dogs.

"There's no work or food in Zimbabwe and I provide for my family from here.

"But I must go where it's safe," said a woman, who
wanted to be identified only as "Sarah" because she feared reprisals.

On Monday, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa visited the Western Cape to assess xenophobic attacks.

The minister said criminals were behind the incidents.

- Cape Times

Fear of violence drives exodus back to Zim

2010-07-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

Families of Zimbabwean migrants have been fleeing South Africa because they fear xenophobic attacks now that the World Cup is over, an international aid agency said on Tuesday.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said it was preparing for a "possible exodus of vulnerable Zimbabwean migrants fleeing threats of post World Cup xenophobic violence in South Africa".

South African security forces moved into townships in the Cape Town area on Monday after attacks and threats against foreign migrants workers. Scores of workers took refuge at police stations after shops run by migrants were looted.

The IOM had no figures for Zimbabweans crossing at the border town of Beitbridge in the past week, but said they had seen unusually high numbers of trucks laden with furniture and household goods, indicating people were leaving homes and jobs.

"People have clearly stated that they are returning indefinitely because of the fear of violence," IOM spokesperson Jared Bloch told a news briefing in Geneva.

More than 90% of 140 Zimbabwean migrants interviewed by the IOM at the weekend upon return to their homeland said that they had fled threats of violence. The other 10% said they had already suffered xenophobic violence.

The World Cup ended on Sunday.

South Africa has attracted millions of workers from across the continent who compete with locals for scarce jobs and resources. Two years ago more than 60 people were killed during anti-foreigner attacks.

"These are not idle threats people are responding to. They have a very real memory of what could happen," Bloch said.

An estimated 1,5-million to two million Zimbabweans work and live in South Africa, according to the Geneva-based IOM.

Its contingency plans include pre-positioning food and hygiene packs on the Zimbabwean side of the border and measures to speed processing of documents in case of a large influx.

Locals 'strategising' attacks
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has received more than 200 calls from distressed Zimbabweans fearing xenophobic attacks.

"Since Sunday, we've been receiving calls ... I received 207 calls from members of the party who say they can't go home," MDC spokesperson in South Africa Sibanengi Dube told reporters in Johannesburg.

"They said they were seeing locals standing in groups, strategising [to attack]."

Dube said the calls were from all corners of the country, but most of them came from the Western Cape.

"I received calls of individuals who claimed to have been beaten up," he said.

Environment in SA 'largely unchanged'
The SA Institute of Race Relations said on Tuesday there had been little change in the environment that gave rise to the attacks in 2008.

Spokesperson Catherine Schulze said the institute was not predicting an outbreak of violence, as there was not enough information to do so.

But it was cautioning that the environment that gave rise to the attacks of 2008 was "largely unchanged".

"Poverty, unemployment, and incomes indicators have not shifted significantly since 2008, while high levels of crime and violence are an everyday reality in many poor communities.

"At the same time, reports of increased threats, some disguised as jokes and idle banter, created an enabling environment for a renewed series of attacks."

She said the institute urged the government and the African National Congress to use their leadership positions to change perceptions that many black South Africans harboured towards foreign African immigrants.

Senior government figures should make "concerted public statements" condemning xenophobia.

The institute's statement followed a series of incidents in the Western Cape, where on Sunday night a number of foreign-owned spaza and container shops in Cape Town and surrounding towns were burned and looted.

Some vandalism and attempted looting continued during the day on Monday in Khayelitsha, where police helped Somali shop owners remove their goods.

Police said on Tuesday morning however that the situation was "calm".

On Monday, President Jacob Zuma said though there had been rumours of planned new violence, he was not certain there had been actual threats.

He said the government had established a ministerial commission to deal with the situation and people "should not have fears". - Sapa, Reuters

Foreigners are 'scapegoats'

2010-07-13T06:50:00.000-07:00

A failure of leadership and local government structures has created a fertile ground for the breeding of xenophobic violence in the Cape's informal settlements.

While a prompt show of force by law enforcement authorities - with the hardcore back-up of military armoured vehicles in risk areas such as Du Noon, Khayelitsha and Masiphumelele - appears to have headed off a threatened cycle of violence that erupted at the weekend, few think the problem is going to go away.

At the conclusion of the World Cup on Sunday, a sudden spike in attacks on foreigners in informal settlements around the Cape peninsula raised fears that a new cycle of xenophobic violence - like the conflagration that raged in 2008, when more than 60 people were killed - was about to be unleashed.

Nearly a dozen incidents of violence against foreigners - most of them Somali shopkeepers - were recorded between Sunday, the day of the World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands, and yesterday morning.

After the weekend's attacks, scores of Somalis have taken refuge in police stations and community halls around the Cape.

Zimbabweans continued to flee for their lives from informal settlements to congregate at makeshift places of refuge around highway truckstops and filling stations on the N1, seeking transport back to their country.

In their official responses, police dismissed the sudden spike in xenophobic violence as unconnected crimes.

However, the attacks have come in the midst of a whispering campaign in townships and informal settlements around the country, warning foreigners to leave South Africa before the end of the World Cup - or face the consequences.

In at least one instance, in Blikkiesdorp, this threat was conveyed via a meeting of the local community apparently convened by local leaders.

But in most cases the threat of violence has been voiced anonymously in the impersonal environment of taxis, trains and shebeens.

According to social conflict analyst Stef Snel, the tension can be traced back to basic economic circumstances and to a competition by communities for scarce resources.

"There isn't enough to go around, it is that simple - not enough housing, not enough jobs, not enough food," Snel said.

"And most of what there is comes in the form of government handouts, to be administered by often corrupt and unaccountable councillors and civic officials.

"Control over these resources is not only power, it is also profit. And the problem is that everything - from positions on housing lists to job creation programmes to food distribution initiatives - gets sold, and rather than alleviating the social problems, often exacerbates them.

"Then, when the community loses patience, the foreigners get blamed. They are the convenient scapegoats," he said.

The problem is not new. After the 2008 xenophobic attacks, the focus fell particularly on two elements in the social dynamic as breeding grounds for xenophobic violence: migrant workers at informal settlements; and a largely opportunistic leadership that had established itself in the ANC's onetime struggle alliance partner, the SA National Civics Organisation (Sanco).

In 2008, several Sanco leaders overtly supported the drive to expel foreigners from the country, and, in some cases were suspected of being behind the violence directed against them.

Chris Stali, Sanco provincial secretary, said threats against foreigners reflected "political immaturity and a lack of understanding of the issues".

"We have a new leadership now. The old leadership stole services and projects and when the community asked about jobs, they said they must ask the foreigners. Our leadership is different, we don't have our own political and financial interests."

But the new Sanco leadership is not having it all its own way.

In areas such as Du Noon, the former Sanco leadership - though suspended by Sanco nationally, and though last elected in 1997 (ostensibly for a single year term) - is refusing to stand down.

The chairperson of the "other" Sanco - who has also been named as fomenting xenophobic violence in the area - continues to administer a feeding programme in the area, which one youth league leader in the area said had never fed the hungry of Du Noon.

The youth leader, wanting to remain anonymous for fear of her safety, said the suspended Sanco leadership also continued to control the provision of RDP housing in the area.

- Cape Argus

Man killed hours after becoming new dad

2010-07-13T06:48:00.000-07:00

A man was shot dead in a park in Luzuko in Gugulethu, hours after becoming a father to a baby boy.

Groups of fellow Ghanaians gathered at the park, just off Lansdowne Road, where the 35-year-old man's body lay.

Police spokeswoman Nondumiso Paul said the victim and a friend had received a phone call from a woman, asking them to meet her at a garage.

As they walked across the park, two men approached them.

One of the suspects pointed his gun at the pair and fired shots. The Ghanaian man was hit in the head and died instantly.

The attackers ran to a getaway "cockroach" taxi, and fled, said Paul.

Paul would not confirm if the murder was related to xenophobic violence.

- Cape Argus / IOL

Mutilated body found in bush

2010-07-13T06:46:00.000-07:00

The mutilated body of a Malawian man was found in bushes near Samora Machel, Nyanga.

The naked body was found by passersby at about 5pm. He had been stabbed in the chest and neck.
His clothes were lying near his body.

The man's South African girlfriend was taken in for questioning by police, but later released.

Police spokeswoman Captain Ntomboxolo Sitshitshi was adamant the case did not involve xenophobic violence.

Police were investigating a murder, she said.

'The crime was definitely not related to the spate of xenophobic violence that broke out at the weekend,' she said.

- Cape Argus / IOL

All quiet in the Western Cape

2010-07-13T06:45:00.000-07:00

There were no reported incidents of xenophobic violence in the Western Cape on Monday night, a police spokesperson said on Tuesday.

"It's very quiet. There's nothing to report," said Captain Frederick van Wyk.

Police were however continuing their patrols in all areas where there had earlier been problems.

On Sunday night a number of foreign-owned spaza and container shops in Cape Town and surrounding towns were burned and looted.

Some vandalism and attempted looting continued during the day on Monday in Khayelitsha, where police helped Somali shop owners remove their goods.

Spokesperson for provincial disaster management Daniella Ebenezer said on Tuesday that the scores of foreigners who sought refuge at police stations on Sunday night all went home or to friends or relatives on Monday.

"It seems like the situation has really calmed down," she said.

She said there were "isolated incidents" on Monday in Wallacedene, Du Noon and Ocean View, all in Cape Town, and in Grabouw.

Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa visited the Western Cape on Monday for a briefing on the situation.

His ministry said after the visit that authorities would not tolerate "criminality disguised as xenophobia". - Sapa

Xenophobic violence is back

2010-07-12T22:07:00.000-07:00

Last time, they cut his face open with a panga and destroyed his shop, but Ibrahim Mursal said the mood is worse this year.

The Somali trader is one of more than 100 displaced foreigners seeking refuge at a camp site outside Wellington, north of Cape Town, following renewed xenophobic violence across Western Cape.

He and his friends said they would rather risk the war at home than the "war" in South Africa - but they can't find a way back.

Also yesterday, at least 60 Zimbabweans were camped outside a truck-stop on the N1, just outside Cape Town, desperate for a lift back to Harare.

Amid brewing tension in several townships in and around Cape Town, local government officials and politicians raced to quell talk of a "second uprising" against foreigners after the World Cup.

Somalis, Ethiopians and Zimbabweans have been the main targets.

"The first time, I was in Mitchell's Plain, but this is worse," said Mursal, whose face bears witness to the first wave of xenophobic attacks two years ago in which at least 62 people were killed countrywide.

". Now you even see coloured people [attacking]. Before it was only the blacks. Maybe now the whites are also coming," he said.

But the police and community leaders yesterday remained adamant that security forces would not allow a repeat of the tragic events.

The army has already been deployed in some hot-spots, and civil society leaders are calling for the deployment of the police recruits deployed for the World Cup.

"Yes, we do have a situation on our hands," confirmed Drakenstein Municipality's Tommy Matthee.

"But what has happened here is not the result of the community, but of a few individuals acting in a criminal manner under the disguise of xenophobia. In the main, it is shops that have been looted."

Matthee said his municipality had identified four hot-spots to which leaders would be sent to speak to residents.

He said three incidents were reported in the Silvertown area yesterday morning. There were several incidents on Sunday night in Phillipi and Langa, in Cape Town, and in Mbekweni, near Paarl.

Edgar Jennecke's daughter was shot in the hand during the violence in Mbekweni - which means "respect" in Xhosa.

"They were plundering the containers ... when the police arrived the shooting started. She was at the wrong place at the wrong time," he said.

Matthee said the police had opened criminal cases against some of the looters.

The ANC added its voice yesterday. In a strongly worded statement, the party said: "Xenophobia is a crime against humanity and the perpetrators should be isolated."

But several foreigners yesterday said the government was failing them on several fronts, including the slow pace of registering asylum seekers and lack of protection.

The temporary displacement camp at Antoniesvlei, between Wellington and Ceres, was without food yesterday afternoon.

"South Africa is a big government in Africa. They can bring a solution," said Mursal.

- Times Live

Foreigners seek refuge at police stations

2010-07-12T04:49:00.001-07:00

A heavy police and military presence has been deployed in Western Cape townships following sporadic xenophobic violence, police said on Monday.

Provincial authorities said scores of foreigners had sought refuge at police stations in the region.

Police spokesman Captain Frederick van Wyk said that on Sunday night there were "sporadic incidents of looting" at shops belonging to foreigners.

Areas where this occurred included Nyanga, Philippi East and Khayelitsha on the Cape Flats, Wellington, Paarl East, Mbekweni (a Paarl township), Franschhoek and Klapmuts.

"Police responded and a heavy police contingency was deployed in conjunction with Metro Police and SANDF [the defence force] in all these areas," Van Wyk said.

He said seven men, aged between 19 and 30, had been arrested in the Nyanga area.

They were charged with public violence and would appear in the Phillipi Magistrates' Court on Monday.

"SAPS [the police] will continue to deploy in high numbers to maintain law and order in the mentioned areas," he said.

"Tranquillity has been restored and no further reports of violence have been reported."

Spokeswoman for provincial disaster management Daniella Ebenezer said earlier that 70 foreigners had sought refuge overnight at Mbekweni police station in Paarl and 22 at Wellington.

There were smaller numbers at police stations in Franschhoek, and Langa and Harare on the Cape Flats.

They had gone to the stations "mainly because they were fearful", but in some instances following attacks on shops.

Ebenezer said there were "sporadic" attacks on shops on Saturday in the region, and "some incidents of looting" on Sunday.

No-one had been seriously injured.

She said that according to reports from police, on Sunday spaza shops and containers also used as shops were "damaged" in Mbekweni, Paarl East, Wellington and Nyanga.

The province and municipalities were ready with contingency plans, she said.

Die Burger newspaper reported on Monday that shortly before midnight on Sunday, police advised foreigners, mainly Somalis, to leave the Cape Flats township of Nyanga, and escorted numbers of them out of the area.

The newspaper carried a photograph of Somali spaza shops in flames in Philippi, also on the Cape Flats.- Sapa

'They should all leave and f*** off'

2010-07-12T04:41:00.000-07:00

A meeting that was meant to unite residents of the Ramaphosa informal settlement turned ugly last night when locals voiced their hatred of foreigners.

"Why should I suffer in my own country? They should all leave and f*** off," a man screamed into the microphone.

The thousand-strong audience cheered in response.

But this was just one of dozens of hateful comments, many suggesting that unless the government removes the foreigners, violence could erupt.

The meeting, led by the International Community Unifiers (ICU), community leaders and local government, was interrupted constantly by residents' stories of their terrible encounters with foreigners.

A member of the audience described his experience when he was robbed at gunpoint.

It was when ICU president Dennis Mpangane took the stage to speak to the crowd that the audience turned ugly.

He began by mentioning that he was not originally from South Africa, to which the audience responded with hundreds of shouts of "hamba" and "Go home".

Mpangane, unable to be heard over the screams of the crowd, then chose not to speak for the rest of the meeting.

A local priest, Reverend Brian Lehoko, and a police superintendent, known only as Mathebula, managed to calm the audience after the interruption.

Mathebula called on the residents to report any violent crimes, especially xenophobic attacks, to the police as soon as possible.

"The police will be here day and night," he added.

The meeting also addressed service delivery issues that resulted in a protest earlier this year, and it was during these complaints that residents began to speak against xenophobia.

"We had two agendas today: service delivery and xenophobia," announced a resident, "but service delivery projects will be put on hold if (xenophobic violence) happens."

The community was again promised by ward councillor Craig Bennetts and representatives from the Department of Housing that plans to tackle the road, sewerage and electricity issues were "on the move".

After the meeting, when the crowd dispersed, Mpangane said: "The meeting went as well as it could have. The community were angry about service delivery and I couldn't speak, but they do understand the (xenophobia) situation."

Ramaphosa residents were one of the centres of violence two years ago.

Somali shopkeeper Abdi Ismael has lived in Ramaphosa for four years, and was greatly affected by the xenophobic violence in 2008.

"I had three shops," he said, "but I had to leave (Ramaphosa) when the attacks started. When I returned (several months later), they had all been looted and vandalised."

Ismael has been threatened - again. "Come the end of the World Cup, you'll be leaving," warned a client of his.

"Others have told me 'this shop will be ours'," said Ismael.

"Of course I'm worried, but the community will try its best to be on top of the situation. I'm just hoping the words won't escalate into violence." - The Star

Mob ransacks Somali-owned shop

2010-07-12T03:47:00.000-07:00

A Somali-owned shop has been ransacked just metres away from where the National Police Commissioner was making an anti-xenophobia speech.

While Nathi Mthethwa told the Khayelitsha community that people who attacked foreigners risked the full might of the law, a crowd of about 200 people was looting a shop nearby.

When the Daily Voice arrived at the scene, shopkeeper Deego Mohamed was frantically packing what was left of his stock into a car.

Mohamed said the mob entered his shop shortly after 1pm on Friday and started helping themselves.

"One of them was armed with a gun and he told me to shut up while others were taking the groceries," he said.

Police spokeswoman Nosiphiwo Mtengwana said another shop in the area hurriedly packed up as well after the news of the first attack spread.

However, locals who attended Mthethwa's meeting vowed to protect foreigners living amongst them.

Community leader Michael Hamco told the Daily Voice that those who attack foreigners are nothing but thugs.

"These are just criminals who roam the street and have nothing to do," he said.

"We will protect the foreign nationals. We don't want anyone who has the intention of attacking the foreigners living here with us."

A fired-up Mthethwa told the crowd of about 500 people, which included Somalis, that criminals considering attacking foreigners would face the full might of the law.

"The police will take these things very seriously," he vowed.

"The people who are behind this are criminals."

- Daily Voice

Cops move to protect foreign nationals

2010-07-12T03:42:00.000-07:00

Police have been deployed in several townships on the Western Cape province of South Africa to protect foreign nationals after escalating threats of violence against them, a police spokesperson said on Monday.

Signs of social instability could potentially harm South Africa's image and investor sentiment, undoing the gains of hosting a successful soccer World Cup tournament that ended on Sunday.

Police said the situation in the Western Cape province was tense but there have not been injuries so far.

"There were two shacks that were burned in separate areas and there's been sporadic incidents of looting and threats have been made on foreign nationals," said Western Cape police spokesperson Frederick van Wyk.

"Police have responded. At this moment there is a heavy police contingent (in several areas) which also includes Metro police and SANDF (South African National Defence Force)," he added.

The biggest economy in Africa has attracted millions of workers from across the continent and further afield, but their presence is not always welcomed by those locals who compete with them for scarce jobs and resources.

Two years ago more than 60 people were killed during anti-foreigner attacks.

Police in Gauteng said there had not been incidents against foreigners in the economic hub of South Africa. - Reuters

Foreigners continue to leave in fear of attacks

2010-07-10T15:20:00.000-07:00

DESPITE assurances by government officials that everything was being done to avert tragic xenophobic attacks similar to those of two years ago, nervous foreigners continue to leave.

In Cape Town yesterday, hundreds of Zimbabweans made their way to the Paarl tunnel on the N1 highway, about 80km outside of Cape Town.

They have been leaving since Monday.

When Sowetan arrived about 40 Zimbabweans had managed to get a ride on an empty bus, which had just dropped off World Cup fans in Cape Town.

The driver of the bus, headed for Durban, said he would drop the Zimbabweans off in Bloemfontein, where they would look for transport to Johannesburg.

In Gugulethu more than 10 Somali shopkeepers have fled the area. Their shops have already been vandalised, Mncedisi Twalo of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign said.

“We are expecting the government to communicate with the community instead of using the rumours as a scapegoat. When elections come it is the only time we become important,” Twalo said.

In Alexandra, Johannesburg, a police source said they would begin intense round the clock patrols from next week.

“The problem seems to be at the RDP houses section, where locals are complaining that foreigners have houses, while they are on a long waiting list. We foresee problems there.

“We will be patrolling those areas and the rest of Alexandra to make sure that no xenophobic attacks erupt like they did in 2008,” the police official told Sowetan.

At a new RDP section people were seen moving into the new houses allocated to them.

Residents of the Ramaphosa informal settlement in Ekurhuleni confirmed that soldiers had patrolled the area on Wednesday.

Reiger Park police station communication officer Toni Perifort said the patrols by the soldiers were meant to send a message that law enforcement agencies were on high alert and to encourage residents to abide by he law.

- SOWETAN

Khayelitsha attacks 'not xenophobic'

2010-07-10T15:05:00.000-07:00

A foreign national was shot dead and two others were wounded in a shooting incident on Saturday in Khayelitsha near Cape Town, Western Cape police said.

However, Captain Frederick van Wyk said the incident was not a xenophobic attack.

He said the three foreigners, who are all shop owners, were on their way from Khayelitsha to buy stock at Philippi Cash and Carry when they were hijacked at a traffic light.

The three suspects drove the bakkie to Sweethome Farms and robbed them of an undisclosed amount of money before shooting them.

One of them was killed instantly while the two others who were wounded were taken to hospital.

Van Wyk said police were investigating a case of murder, attempted murder and hijacking.

"This is regarded as a crime incident and cannot be attributed to violence at a certain foreign national," he said. - Sapa

2010-07-06T22:19:00.000-07:00

'We are going to burn you with tyres'

2010-07-06T07:35:00.000-07:00

A group of foreigners, mainly Zimbabweans, are camping outside a truck stop with their belongings on the N1 near Paarl in a desperate bid to catch the first ride out of the Western Cape.

They said they had been told by locals that they, long with their their homes, would be burned after the soccer finale.

Civic organisations and churches are among those who have warned of potential attacks on foreigners after the World Cup, but police have said they have no evidence to suggest that the wave of xenophobic attacks that took place in 2008 would be repeated after July 11.

Yesterday, the Cape Argus spoke to several Zimbabweans sitting at the exit area of the Winelands 1-Stop Engen garage on the N1, and others waiting near the tollgate at the Huguenot tunnel.

They have been attempting to get rides to Joburg from truck drivers at "cheaper" rates in a desperate bid to escape what they say are impending xenophobic attacks. From there, they said, it would be easier to catch a bus to Zimbabwe.

According to the Zimbabweans, getting a lift on a truck to Joburg can cost between R100 and R200 per person, without luggage, whereas a taxi can cost about R400 per person, excluding luggage.

Some said they had been waiting for five days, while others arrived three days ago.

People interviewed said they were fleeing Dunoon, Philippi, Philippi East, Crossroads, Malmesbury and Grabouw.

The Zimbabweans claimed they had been confronted by local residents who threatened to "burn them and their homes", after the World Cup.

Families gathered with as many of their belongings as they could transport, including fridges, microwaves, double beds and mattresses, couches, pots, buckets and bags of clothes.

Tamiviraishe Mazana, who had been working on a chicken farm in Site View in Grabouw, was among the group of more than 50 people waiting outside the Engen Garage before noon yesterday.

He and his family had spent the weekend camped outside the garage. They said they would be willing to return to South Africa if there were no attacks after the soccer tournament.

"We are scared for our lives. We never know what is going to happen," said Mazana.

Rachel Gatsi, who worked in the kitchen on a farm in Grabouw, said she was told "face to face" by her neighbours that she would have to leave. "Some of them tell us, 'We are going to burn you with tyres'... We are scared; we have to go."

Tendai Kadzviti, 34, fled his home in Strand's Zwelenthemba informal settlement.

He claimed locals were "holding meetings to plan attacks".

According to Kadzviti, landlords and homeowners from who they had been renting asked the Zimbabweans to vacate the premises and had refused to accept rent from July 1.

Others said their landlords had asked them to leave because they feared their homes could be damaged in xenophobic attacks.

Shepherd Matema was waiting with his wife and 10-month-old baby. He said he had been forced to leave by his landlord, who was afraid neighbours would damage his house.

Matema said he was worried about his money running out.

"Xenophobia is the push factor. We were not prepared. We don't have enough money," he said.

Foreigners who had decided not to flee their homes and businesses, said they were bracing themselves for the worst.

In Philippi, a Somali shop-keeper, who declined to be named, said he had heard the rumours but was staying put.

Another Somali, who has a spaza shop in Dunoon, said he had not bought any new stock.

"The people tell us that come July 12, we must all go back to where we come from.

"We have a few days. I don't know what I am going to do. Where must I go? There is too much fighting in my own country. I thought it was nice and peaceful in this country."

Locals in Philippi and Dunoon said they had heard that foreigners would be targeted but could not say what had prompted the threats.

Western Cape Premier Helen Zille has written to President Jacob Zuma, asking for him to intervene.

On Monday, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa urged Zille to report concerns about possible xenophobic attacks to the cabinet-appointed inter-ministerial committee on xenophobia, which he heads.

Mthethwa, on a visit to ward 99 in Khayelitsha ahead of a by-election on July 21, said nobody would be allowed to take the law into their own hands and that locals and foreigners had to work together.

Zille did not indicate whether she had approached the committee.

"I was approached by the media regarding my views on the rumours of possible xenophobic violence and I responded to these queries," she said. - Cape Argus

Blow a vuvuzela against xenophobia

2010-07-05T13:51:00.001-07:00

Several city organisations were set to meet on Monday to discuss a joint campaign aimed at preventing an outbreak of xenophobic violence after the World Cup, following their reports that foreigners in townships face very real threats as soon as the sporting event ends.

The meeting will lead up to the "Blow your vuvuzela against xenophobia" campaign, to be launched on Thursday.

Africa Unite, a city-based NGO, hosted a meeting in Philippi East on Monday, inviting other organisations to discuss plans to prevent xenophobia after the World Cup.

Community leaders at the meeting were keen to launch anti-xenophobia initiatives this week, explaining that they had heard of planned attacks on foreigners.

Africa Unite has held several workshops and community meetings about possible xenophobic attacks in the past few months.

The organisation's director, Zoe Nkongolo, said the reports at these meetings, from locals and foreigners, proved there was a definite possibility of violence after the soccer event.

Last week the province's MEC for Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, Anton Bredell, met roleplayers to address fears of xenophobic attacks.

The department held meetings with both the UNHCR and civil society last week.

Nkongolo said that a meeting had been held last month at Beautiful Gate, a Phillipi East organisation, during which recommendations were made to prevent an outbreak of xenophobia.

During that meeting a committee comprising 15 local organisations was formed.

Their recommendations included the launch of the anti-xenophobia campaign, calling on support from local ward councillors and appealing for an increased police presence after the World Cup.

On Sunday, local ANC member Zola Nkomo said it was important to get to the bottom of the "rumours and reports", adding that at this stage there were no facts to support suggestions that violence would take place, nor were reasons for the possible attacks clear.

Nkongolo said that Africa Unite youth peer educators had warned that they had already had to intervene in xenophobia-related incidents in areas like Masiphumelele and Dunoon.

"This is a reality, foreign nationals have confirmed it."

At yesterday's meeting Mohamed Fatule, from the Somali Retailers Association, said: "If you don't take action, this will happen. When three customers come into your shop and tell you that after the World Cup is done, you must leave, then it's serious. Even in Enkanini (in Khayelitsha), they were trying to burn down Somali shops."

Xolile Ndzoyi, from Chuma, a Gugulethu-based organisation, said these kinds of initiatives would be the most effective, because they targeted youth, the reported perpetrators of the rumoured attacks.

"The young people are the ones doing these things. We need events that will attract them, like street football. But I'm worried, the World Cup is ending in one week. In South Africa, we always act after the problem."

Meeting chairman Bonisele Mngese, a community leader from Browns Farm, said that news of planned attacks was spreading fast in townships.

"There is the widespread rumour that after the World Cup our brothers and sisters will be chased away from South African soil.

"We have to stand up, we don't want to see what we saw the last time. Whoever is perpetrating this, we don't know, but let's prevent the coming anger," Mngese said.

Nkongolo said the office of the mayor Dan Plato and Western Cape premier Helen Zille would be approached about the campaign.

- Cape Argus

'Youths given tik and R60 to kill Somalis'

2010-06-30T02:52:00.000-07:00

Four youngsters aged between 16 and 26 are behind bars for allegedly accepting cash and tik bribes to kill Somali shopkeepers.

The Bloekombos quartet are accused of taking money from jealous local businessmen who want the rival Somali store owners out of their area.

The young men were allegedly given guns, money and drugs to kill the Somali shopkeepers and burn their shops.

Monica Fritz, 55, said her nephew Terrance Fritz, 26, was arrested last week for allegedly taking part in recent attacks.

"Last Thursday the police knocked on our door late at night and arrested my nephew," she said.

"Apparently they had arrested another boy earlier in the week who they believed had taken part in all the Somali attacks that have been going on in the area.

"So this boy told police that he wasn't working alone and that, in fact, he and a few others had been paid by shop owners to kill Somali shopkeepers."

Fritz said she had heard Terrance and other young men were paid between R60 and R100 and given tik straws and a gun to kill or burn foreign-owned shops.

"From what I hear, the boys would be sent out with the guns which were later taken back after the mission was completed," she said.

Fritz, who raised Terrance, said the whole community had been talking about the Somali attacks months before they started.

"People talk in our area and a few weeks before this thing began, there was a rumour that xenophobic attacks were going to come back," she said.

"I heard Somali shopkeepers were being told to go back to their countries if they didn't want to get hurt.

"What I don't understand is why these people used our children to kill."

Fritz said the only explanation is the young men's greed for their next tik fix.

"Tik is a horrible thing because that is how they lured them in, the message was clear 'Drug yourselves so that you can have the heart to kill'," she said.

Terrance's mother Frances Fritz said it wasn't her son's fault that grown men took advantage of him.

Eunice January, 47, mother of Xolisa, 24, said she had only learned of her son's alleged involvement after he was arrested.

"I didn't know or suspect anything until the police kicked down the door to his shack outside and arrested him," she said.

"I later heard that he and a few others were bought by local businessmen to terrorise Somalis.

"I felt sick and horrible when I heard that
grown men used our children to murder.

"My son was a well-behaved person at home but with children one never knows because we don't know what they get up to when they are outside, so I don't know what to believe."

Bloekombos Somali teenager Mohamed Husen, 19, said his 17-year-old brother had been shot in their shop over two weeks ago.

"He was alone in the shop and these three guys came in to buy two cigarettes," he said.

"Apparently they gave him a R50 and when he turned back to get their change, they shot him in the back and fled.

"Nobody knows what their motives were because they didn't rob the shop or even wait for their change."

Shopkeeper Abdul Fatah, 30, said he has been threatened a lot since he moved to the area.

"I've been here for nearly a year and I've been getting threats," he said.

"We're being told to leave and go back home because as soon as the World Cup is over, we are going to get hurt.

"Although my shop hasn't been vandalised, I've heard a lot of things about shops being broken into and burned down.

"We are all very scared and some other people have already left the country."

- Daily Voice

We are xenophobic monsters

2010-05-31T12:50:00.000-07:00

SA is again besieged by its own, homegrown terror

By Justice Malala: They are killing foreigners again. They are not waiting for the World Cup to come and go. They have started killing them now.

Last week, in a case that has not been reported anywhere, a Somali shopkeeper was robbed and murdered in Soshanguve, Pretoria. He was easy prey, like all Somali and Pakistani and Bangladeshi shopkeepers. Like all foreigners.

The murderers came in the night. There were two Somalis in the shop. When the robbers arrived, one man ran into the storeroom at the back of the shop and locked himself in. The other tried to run out of the shop, into the community at large. They shot him five times. He died in a pool of his own blood. They killed him for a mere R3000 and cellphone airtime.

On Thursday night, in the newish F4 section of a village called New Eersterus, Hammanskraal, a Bangladeshi shopkeeper was shot and killed during a robbery. New Eersterus, where I grew up and where, just a few months ago, the police mowed down and killed an innocent Olga Kekana, is just 10km from Soshanguve.

The village is serviced by the Temba police station, 15km away. The police were not there on Thursday when the Bangladeshi shopkeeper was killed.

On Friday evening, a friend of mine who rents his shop in New Eersterus to a Bangladeshi, was fielding calls from foreigners throughout the region who were worried that, when the sun goes down, murder walks the land.

"The word is that criminals want to make cash to spend during the World Cup. This is their chance. The attacks are picking up. Things are getting worse," he said.

Foreign shopkeepers, most of them Somalis and Bangladeshis, have been murdered in their hundreds in South Africa over the past 10 years. In Eastern Cape, the Daily Dispatch has written amazing exposés about the fear in which foreigners live.

I have heard young men talk about how vulnerable the foreigners are. Because many of them are in the country illegally, they do not have the paperwork to open bank accounts, the thugs reason. That means that they have a lot of cash on the premises.

They are unarmed and the community around them is too scared to come out and help them."

The thugs attack them because they are thought to have cash and because they are foreigners.

In one Daily Dispatch exposé, the killer chillingly intimates that foreign lives are worthless; that it is OK to kill them.

Last week, the ANC in Gauteng said that more service-delivery protests are likely in the province and that there is a possibility that they will be accompanied by xenophobic attacks in the coming year.

The spokesman for the ANC in Gauteng, Dumisa Ntuli, said the party's investigations showed that there was an increasing trend of protests that might provide fertile soil for xenophobic attacks in areas beset by political infighting.

"The report says there will be more protests in the run-up to the local elections, targeting councillors and their property. This is something that worries the leadership.

"There is also a disturbing trend of protests organised by schoolchildren. We are conducting research to look into the possibility that xenophobic attacks might happen again," he said.

Ntuli is wrong on one point. Things might get worse as the local-government elections approach, but the truth is that the killing is happening now.

And it is not just about money. The killings are happening because, as we showed in that terrible winter two years ago, we are stupid and crazy and ignorant and poor and economically insecure ("they are taking our jobs") and even sexually insecure ("they are taking our women"). And we are also inhumane.

We know not what Steve Biko was talking about when he spoke about ubuntu. We have to call this spade by its name: We are xenophobic.

The examples I make above are related to crime. But we know now that it is not just crime. It is also a misguided belief that Somalian lives are worthless. And Zimbabwean lives. And Nigerian lives. And so on. It is xenophobia.

The ANC's warning last week came just a week after the SA Human Rights Commission warned of a new wave of xenophobic attacks ahead of the local-government elections next year.

This potential terror must be nipped in the bud. There have been reports that our country might be targeted by terrorists during the World Cup, starting next week. We will probably throw millions in resources into fighting that threat.

The truth, however, is that xenophobia is our own terrorism. We must stop the attacks before they overwhelm us again.

Xenophobia after World Cup a concern

2010-05-31T12:44:00.000-07:00

A group of eminent global leaders called the "Elders" say xenophobia may erupt in South Africa after the World Cup as jobs start becoming scarcer.

"I think everyone recognises that with having the World Cup in South Africa there are concerns," former Ireland president Mary Robinson told a media briefing in Johannesburg.

Street traders not being able to ply their livelihoods inside 2010 stadia, xenophobia and human trafficking were some of their concerns.

"We are more worried after the World Cup, the possibilities of xenophobia... construction jobs fall away and people, especially from Zimbabwe, will be looking for jobs. "We hope it does not happen and I hope more job opportunities come."

Robinson said every major event had its downfalls: "Pushing aside of small traders is one, human trafficking in the other one."

The Elders were worried about high levels of poverty, poor governance and injustice in Africa, but also optimistic and confident about the continent's future.

Former first lady of Mozambique and wife of former president Nelson Mandela, Graca Machel said Africa was a continent of contrasts. She said even though there were negatives like poverty in Africa, there were also huge opportunities.

"We must take pride that we are able to host a huge spectacle...people must not only concentrate on the negative challenges."

Former US president Jimmy Carter said from countries around the world, South Africa had been hand-picked to host this major event. "I am 100 percent confident that the government, the people of South Africa, and you (journalists) here will represent the continent of Africa with dignity, and that this will be a great World Cup," he said, gaining a round of applause and cheers from reporters.

He said Machel and Archbishop Desmond Tutu would attend some matches while former UN secretary-general Kofie Annan would attend the final.

On Zimbabwe, Carter said future in the troubled country was "very important". A repeat of the 1990 election, he said, must be avoided.

Nobel Peace Laureate Tutu said the Elders were deeply concerned about the fragility of the situation in Sudan. "With less than eight months before a referendum on self-determination in South Sudan, it is crucial that the international community implements a comprehensive strategy towards Sudan... that the will of the people is respected."

The group recommended the international community unite behind former president Thabo Mbeki, chair of the African Union's High-Level Implementation Panel.

The group had also met with President Jacob Zuma on Thursday to discuss their concerns.

The Elders are an eminent group of former leaders who no longer hold public office, and speak and act independently. In the past three years they have used their voices to turn global attention to the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe. They have called on religious and traditional leaders to join the fight for equality for women and girls.

- Timeslive

Xenophobia likely? Letter to the Editor

2010-05-27T03:30:00.000-07:00

EDITOR - The South African mainstream daily newspaper, The Star, of 19 May 2010 says that threats of a second xenophobic bloodshed after 2010 World Cup in SA are real and terrifying.

65 foreigners died in the 2008 hate violence. So the million dollar question is what are the necessary proactive measures being taken now to prevent another 'small genocide'? Civil society, governments, activists, media and other stakeholders should been seen now advocating and acting against South African xenophobia.

Unconfirmed reports are that in KwaZulu Natal province of South Africa, some Zulu South Africans are wearing T-shirts inscribed XENOPHOBIA PART TWO 2010. That is why some people call it ZULUPHOBIA. In 2008 the attacks were coordinated by taxi associations, Police and ANC councillors but now its being led by the ANC Youth League. JOSHUA, by e-mail - The Zimbabwean

Hate attacks may rise again

2010-05-22T05:02:00.000-07:00

Following reports that a flood of violence will be unleashed on migrants and refugees after the World Cup, the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) has told the Mail & Guardian that it is monitoring the situation.

On Monday The Guardian newspaper reported that foreign migrants and refugees in South Africa have been warned to prepare for a wave of xenophobic attacks as soon as the World Cup ends. This followed a statement last week from the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (Cormsa), which said that violence against foreign nationals continues to be a problem, with at least 10 incidents of xenophobic violence already this year.

Cormsa's statement said many foreigners had expressed their concerns about threats of post-World Cup violence aimed at them by neighbours, colleagues, taxi drivers, passersby, nurses, social workers and police officers. "We are monitoring the situation in certain parts of the country where cases of violence against foreign nationals continue to be a cause for concern," NIA spokesperson Brian Dube told the M&G, adding that the security services believe the threat could be exaggerated.

"We want to reassure all communities that the full might of the law will be extended to those who continue to engage in these criminal activities," Dube said.
A Burundian hairdresser, who asked to be called Mariam, told the M&G about chilling advice a customer had given her. "She said, 'My friend, I feel sorry for you because after the World Cup you will be killed. So I'm going to give you some free advice. You must go home. It's not me but there are an organised few that are being prepared to do that to you. So when you get your money, keep it so you can go home.'"

Her compatriot, who calls herself Mushia, told the M&G that these threats have also been extended to South Africans who are sympathetic to refugees.

She said a Sotho friend who runs a stall at the Yeoville market was told: "We're preparing the paraffin and matches. We're coming to burn you too because when we have our meetings, you're not coming."

Cormsa representative Duncan Breen said member organisations from across the country have been reporting similar threats to refugees. He also said there are "indications of localised meetings in some areas" and allegations that "lists of names have been drawn up, including minorities".

Tara Polzer, a researcher in Wits University's forced-migration studies programme, said that she has seen little evidence of centralised planning of post-World Cup violence but "the idea is spreading on a local level; it's being discussed and legitimised by being repeated over and over again".

There has been some recognition from authorities but no significant interventions have been put in place to address the factors that sparked the 2008 attacks, Polzer said.

The key trigger then was competition for leadership positions, she said. "In some cases elected officials such as ward councillors tried to solidify their support base by inciting violence and by being seen to tap into a popular concern. Given that leadership is a key trigger, and with 2011 local government elections coming up, those forms of mobilisation could increase."

Clinical psychologist Johanna Kistner said she has heard similar stories from many of the refugees she works with in the Johannesburg inner city. They are often threatened with some kind of deadline -- "after the elections", "after Mandela dies" and now "after the World Cup" -- she said, admitting that part of it might be panic. "But it's so persistent and pervasive that we have to take it seriously," she said.

Police ministry spokesperson Zweli Mnisi said: "The minister has not been approached officially … If people have been threatened, they need to report it to the nearest police station. If they [Cormsa] have information that is legitimate, they must come and engage with us."

- M&G

Zuma loses his cool at SA's housing failure

2010-05-20T06:44:00.000-07:00

Zuma questioned foreign nationals who "forged" documents to gain access to services meant for South African citizens, and locals who received government houses and chose to sell or rent them out and move back into shacks.

- President Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma - Almost Cried - Sweetwater

Xenophobia two years on

2010-05-13T23:00:00.000-07:00

This week marks two years since a wave of xenophobic attacks targeted foreign nationals living in South Africa. The two-week explosion of violence left 62 people dead and thousands homeless.

Miriam* is a mother of five from the DRC. She wept as she recounted what happened two weeks ago. She described how a man shoved a newspaper in her daughter’s face, saying: "After the World Cup we will kill you. We will come into your houses and kill you one by one." Traumatised, Miriam’s daughter looked at the newspaper: it featured a report by the Human Rights Commission on the possible resurgence of xenophobic violence.

"I will be counting the days after the World Cup,’ Miriam said."I will be killed. I will not still be alive."

Miriam was badly affected by the 2008 attacks. Her husband owned a large shop in Alexandra township. When the looting and harassment began, he left in search of a better life. Miriam stayed behind to support their children. "The way I am living today, in poverty, is because of this," she said.

Miriam has reason to be afraid. On Monday the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa released a press statement to voice concerns that "a month from the opening match of the World Cup, threats are mounting of further mass xenophobic violence once the event is over".

Little progress
Professor Loren Landau, director of the Forced Migration Studies Programme at Wits University, confirmed to the Mail & Guardian that "this is something we have been hearing all over".

According to Landau, there has been little progress since 2008. "What hasn’t happened at a community level is an effort to address the triggers of the violence," he said. "In the communities where foreigners have been attacked, our impression is that [they] have stayed away."

Professor Tinyiko Maluleke, President of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), told the M&G he had also heard about renewed threats of violence, and added: "We have always been aware that this [xenophobia] has not disappeared."

Maluleke said the SACC has asked its members to be on the look-out for rising xenophobic tensions. "It is something we need to take seriously".

Bea Abrahams works for the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s Dialogue Programme and helps to host community conversations across the country.

"The tensions around reintegration are very real," she told the M&G. "There is a very pervasive sense of fear from migrants."

Marginalisation
Although community policing forum representatives in Alexandra and Diepsloot flatly denied that xenophobic tensions are on the rise, Abrahams insisted that "what emerged from our community conversations in Diepsloot, in particular, is the extent of foreign marginalisation in the community".

Landau and Abrahams were worried that next year's local elections may generate further xenophobic violence. Landau said that the struggle for local leadership often causes tension to rise. "There are all kinds of formal and informal political structures," Abrahams added. "They wield enormous power because they can easily influence opinion."

Abrahams pointed out that when it comes to government involvement, "there is almost a complete absence of mechanisms to deal with community conflicts".

Maluleke agreed that this was cause for concern: "We are not convinced that the previous government, or this one, has prioritised xenophobia. We have not seen a move away from that denial," he said.

Ministry of State Security spokesperson Brian Dube contested this view. Dube told M&G that the State Security Agency monitored the issue of xenophobia in various parts of the country. "As we indicated in the budget vote presentation to parliament, we are aware of cases where tension exists between communities and foreign nationals," he said. "We process information and liaise with the police and other stakeholders in averting such cases."

So what do these assurances mean for Miriam? Not much. She and her children are counting the days until the end of the Soccer World Cup. "Maybe the South African government will do something," she says. "Maybe they will prepare transport for us to leave."

*Not her real name.

- M&G

Violence after the World Cup

2010-05-11T22:12:00.001-07:00

On the second anniversary of the attacks on foreigners that left 62 people dead and about 100000 fleeing for their lives, a refugee research group has warned that xenophobic violence will flare up again after the World Cup. (from the Times)

Duncan Breen, spokesman for the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in SA, said yesterday: "We need to make this public and speak out about it. If we bring this conversation out into the open now we can talk about what needs to be done to prevent further xenophobic violence."

The consortium said it was concerned by "widespread reports" from foreigners who said "they are being threatened with violence after the World Cup".

The threats come from neighbours, colleagues, taxi drivers, passers-by on the street, nurses, social workers and police officers.

The consortium said it was concerned that "some of those making the threats believe they have the support of senior political leaders".

But Zweli Mnisi, spokesman for Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa, cautioned that the consortium's statements might "be blown out of proportion".

He said if violence were to recur, the police "will deal with these criminal elements who disguise themselves as xenophobia."

De Doorns refuge camp to be cleared

2010-05-07T05:51:00.000-07:00

Authorities want to clear the De Doorns refugee camp before the soccer World Cup starts, Breede Valley mayor Charles Ntsomi said on Friday.

He was speaking at a media conference called in Cape Town to announce details of the closure, scheduled for the end of this month.

He said it was vital to reintegrate the occupants "because South African law does not allow us to keep people in the camp".

"We felt it is now urgent we do it even before the World Cup," he said.

"We don't want to see people in camps during the World Cup. That's the crux of the matter."

The tented camp, on a sports field in the Hex River Valley town, was established in November last year to house several thousand people, mostly Zimbabweans, fleeing threats of xenophobic violence.

Most of them worked as casual labour on farms in the area, a centre of grape production.

NGO workers said on Friday they believed there were only some 600 people still in the camp.

Director for human rights support in the office of the Western Cape premier, Sifiso Mbuyisa, said officials met a group from the camp on May 5.

"The bulk of them... indicated a willingness to leave the camp," he said.

Residents of the camp were in fact constantly interacting with the community, moving in and out of the townships.

"We feel that's an indication they are willing to be reintegrated," he said.

The International Organisation for Migration, an NGO, had said it would provide financial assistance for those who wanted to return to Zimbabwe.

The municipality's media spokesman Manfred van Rooyen said officials would go with refugees who wanted to reintegrate in order to see whether landlords were ready to take them back.

Where homes had been demolished, the refugees would be given a starter kit of poles and black plastic.

The province's head of disaster management Hildegarde Fast said the possibility of having to go through the courts to secure evictions was at the moment "not even on the agenda for us".

Following the xenophobic violence in Cape Town, the vast majority of people had reintegrated voluntarily.

"We feel confident that with the current processes this isn't even on the radar," she said.

- Sapa

Sanco calls for anc councillor’s head

2010-05-05T06:02:00.000-07:00

Official blamed for inciting xenophobic attacks

THE Western Cape ANC councillor being investigated for inciting an attack on 2000 Zimbabweans is now under fire from his own political allies.

More than 300 members of the ANC-affiliated South African National Civic Organisation marched in De Doorns yesterday, calling for the removal of ANC ward councillor Mpumelelo Lubisi – this time after he called for the deportation of about 1000 Lesotho nationals who stay in the town.

The Sanco members have appealed to Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Sicelo Shiceka to remove Lubisi as their councillor.

“If you do not remove this councillor we will show you how to do so,” Sanco chairperson Bonisile Haus warned Shiceka yesterday.

Several community members said they were angry because when they questioned Lubisi about the slow pace of service delivery in the area, he blamed the Zimbabweans and allegedly incited young people to attack them.

Haus said: “Our youths were incited by his words to displace Zimbabweans, and their actions caused them to be arrested. Now he has again used hateful speech against Lesotho nationals.”

According to other alliance leaders in De Doorns, Lubisi called at a public meeting recently for the deportation of the Lesotho nationals who live in their own informal settlement known as Maseru.

Lubisi allegedly said that the Sotho-speaking residents should be “chased out” of De Doorns and “deported back to the homeland from which they came ”.

The ANC confirmed last month that they had suspended Lubisi while they investigated allegations that he incited a group of locals last year to attack the Zimbabweans living in De Doorns. More than 1300 Zimbabweans have been living in a United Nations refugee camp on a field in the town ever since.

Sanco also accused the municipality of wasting money on setting up serviced land for shacks, instead of building houses.

“For more than 17 years this community has had only one housing project. This project has only 147 RDP houses that were all built during (Nelson) Mandela’s term,” said the Sanco memorandum.

Lubisi has denied the allegations against him.

“What I said is that if you don’t have a South African identity book you don’t belong here. When people ask me at a meeting I can’t say Lesotho nationals are South African citizens,” Lubisi said.

He accused Sanco of trying to sabotage his project to move people living on dangerous mountain slopes and in the river bed to suitable land before the winter floods.

- Sowetan

D-Day for Youngsfield refugees

2010-04-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

The last of the refugees living at the Youngsfield Military Base are expected to move from the big white tent they have occupying as the city shuts the camp on Thursday.

The Youngsfield refugees, who have had a week to vacate the military premises, will have all municipal services stopped on Thursday.

Last week, after the last members of the remaining group of refugees occupying the Blue Waters camp were evicted, refugees at Youngsfield were offered a R1 000 payout to leave the camp.

All but one of the 64 Youngsfield occupants accepted the offer.

Denzel Abdulkadir, from Somalia, said he had refused the cash payment because it would not sustain him.

Abdulkadir recently underwent appendix surgery, and was admitted to hospital for five days.

"Places need rent, and I can't give R1 000 to my landlord. What will I eat?"

He said he wanted to go home to Mogadishu.

He had no immediate plans for accommodation, but would head to the Cape Town Refugee Centre to inquire about repatriation tomorrow.

Abdulkadir said he was unhappy about the way things were handled.

"In the beginning they looked after 20 000 people. This is a small group of people, why can't they help us? It's unfair."

The majority of the refugees had already packed their belongings and left Youngsfield by midday yesterday.

A group of about 15 people, comprising two families and individuals, said they still had no place to go.

Today the city was expected to dismantle the tent that has been home to the refugees for close to two years.

City spokesperson Pieter Cronje said the remaining 15 refugees would be supplied with transport to whichever areas they wanted to go to in the metropole.

Regarding the final closure, Cronje said: "That would mean that the last of the 20 000 (people) displaced by the May 2008 violence won't be there any more."

This month marks two years since xenophobic violence flared in the Western Cape.

On May 22, 2008, thousands of foreigners fled informal settlements in droves and settled in safety sites set up by the city, assisted by some provincial government departments and NGOs.

Last week Blue Waters was shut, and a group of 39 refugees living on an open field at the site were arrested for trespassing when they refused to leave the camp.

The 39 refugees were jailed for two days, then released last Friday following a court appearance.

They have since been staying in the parking area of a state-owned building, formerly known as Custom's House on the Foreshore.

Today will be the sixth day the group will spend in the parking area. They said they will report to the Cape Town Refugee Centre tomorrow to inquire about repatriation options.

Meanwhile, in De Doorns, about 1 000 refugees are still sleeping in tents on a rugby field after being driven out of the informal settlements there earlier this year.

Local farm workers had accused the group, mostly Zimbabweans, of stealing their jobs.

As of Thursday, the De Doorns site will be the only remaining safety site in the province.

- Cape Argus

'It is better to go home and die'

2010-04-13T17:43:00.000-07:00

Some of the refugees facing eviction from the Blue Waters safety camp say that they would rather be deported than continue to be "harassed and intimidated" by the City of Cape Town.

"It is better to go back home to go die there," said Marcel Mahele, 26, originally from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.

On Monday city metro police arrived at the camp to dismantle makeshift structures that some refugees had erected on Sunday night.

City of Cape Town spokesman Pieter Cronje said they were keeping a close eye on Blue Waters for the eviction of the remaining refugees.

He said the city had obtained an eviction order from the High Court, Cape Town to compel the remaining refugees to leave the Strandfontein camp.

Those refugees who have remained behind are waiting for the Sheriff of the High Court to arrive at Blue Waters to serve the eviction notice, which came into effect on March 31.

Cronje said that basic services would be delivered until the eviction notice was exercised.

There were only 153 tents left at Blue Waters. All other tents and portable toilets not being used were being removed, he said.

The small community left alleged that their departed neighbours only left the camp because they had been intimidated into doing so.

The camp manager prevented the media from entering the site because he said he feared this may incite violence.

Speaking to the Cape Argus outside the camp, Mahele said he had arrived in Joburg almost seven years ago, and had been living in a refugee camp in Port Elizabeth when xenophobic violence broke out across South Africa in May, 2008.

He was moved to the Soetwater safety camp, then about three months after that, was transferred to Blue Waters.

Now, all that was left of his makeshift home was the kitchen section, but without a door.

Mahele had refused to leave his home. But he said he was left bleeding when he clung to a blanket as metro police dragged him out before they pulled down his tent home, he claimed.

"Tonight, I have to go sleep with some other friends. The wind is blowing, it is not safe for me to stay here," he said.

Mahele said city officials came knocking on Monday, but had refused to identify themselves.

He said they were there about the pending evictions, but had not shown him any court papers or a notice for his removal.

Tony Shoku, 29, also from the DRC, fears that his home will be next.

"We want a safe place, but we keep on being told we are (living) here illegally," he said.

Shoku has lived at Blue Waters since being moved from his home in Samora Machel in Nyanga, when the xenophobic violence broke out.

"We fear they will come to evict us. But they must evict us to our country - to the border - full eviction," he said, adding that he and other refugees were in danger outside the fences of the camp.

Shoku said they had been promised integration, repatriation and resettlement.

"We are waiting to be resettled. We stay here. We want a solution. We are not fighting for land or money," he said.

Bryant Mushishajay, 22, from Burundi, said he did not know where he was going to spend the night as his belongings had been left uncovered and exposed in the middle of the camp.

"I didn't take any money or rob anyone, and now I don't have a house," he said.

Mushishajay said the city was telling lies and evicting everyone in small groups at a time.

- Cape Argus

Eviction on the card for Youngsfield refugees

2010-04-08T09:56:00.000-07:00

While refugees living at the Blue Waters safety camp anticipate eviction this week, the fate of those still remaining at the Youngsfield military base hangs in the balance.

This week the Sheriff of the Court is expected to execute an eviction order that will see the remaining 187 foreign nationals still occupying the Blue Waters site leave the premises, while the camp closes for repairs.

Meetings were expected to be held today between the city, police and the sheriff to discuss the move.

Meanwhile, those who settled at Wynberg, at the Youngsfield military base, are expected to continue living there until the landowners institute similar legal proceedings.

The camp is situated on land owned by the SA National Defence Force, but the city has been supplying basic services.

Youngsfield's Colonel Pieter Kobbie said that their "legal people are handling matters", and that it appeared that a similar eviction process may be on the cards.

He said the defence force was not obliged to provide services to the refugees, and that the land had been offered "in good faith" during the xenophobic attacks. It was intended to be used for a short period only.

While the camp did not have much to do with the base, it was "not an ideal situation" because it was a military facility.

The city has provided basic services to both camps.

The xenophobic attacks forced more than 20 000 refugees from communities nearly two years ago.

Five safety sites were set up. The others were at Soetwater near Ocean View, Silwerstroom near Atlantis, and Harmony Park near Strand.

There were 461 foreign nationals at the Blue Waters and Youngsfield safety sites.

The five camps were whittled down to two and today, 22 months on, 187 refugees remain camped at Blue Waters and about 64 at Youngsfield.

Those remaining at Blue Waters have refused to accept the skills training, trauma counselling or pro rata payment of R1 000 for reintegration purposes, offered to them by the city.

Last week about 30 families in both camps, identified as "vulnerable" by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, were moved to Blikkiesdorp in Delft.

- Cape Argus

Zim man stoned to death

2010-04-06T09:16:00.000-07:00

A dedicated father has been stoned to death for being a Zimbabwean.

Those who knew him say Sergent Kanyimo was a quiet man whose only passion was his wife and five children back home in Zimbabwe.

The xenophobic attack happened in the early hours of Good Friday in Wallacedene, Kraaifontein, as Sergent left for work in Simon's Town.

Homeowner Maduna Mwahla, 56, says she was shocked to see the bloodied man in her yard.

"It just doesn't make sense. Why would one kill a man simply because he comes from another country?" she asks.

She says she heard a stone hitting her house then peeped through the window and saw Sergent sprawled on her doorstep.

"They hit him with a hammer until he fell down - he stood up but they hit him repeatedly until he could stand no more," she says.

But witnessing the murder is the least of Maduna's worries - she is scared Sergent's spirit will haunt her home and begged his family to conduct a ritual to cleanse it.

"Before they leave, they must say to him: 'Now we are collecting your body and we are taking it back to Zimbabwe'," Maduna says.

"I'm worried that his soul will roam around and cause bad luck."

A 22-year-old witness to the attack says Sergent's death is xenophobic.

"They [the attackers] said they wanted to rid our area of foreigners - and it hurts because I know him personally," she says.

Sergent's brother-in-law Adam Chairi, 22, says the older man hated alcohol and kept to himself.

"All he cared about were his five kids and wife he left in Zimbabwe," says Adam.

Police spokesman Captain Gerhard Niemand asks anyone with information on the attack is urged to call Kraaifontein Police Station on 021 980 5500.- Daily Voice

ANC slams members

2010-03-26T12:08:00.000-07:00

THE ANC in Gauteng has lashed out at its members and members of the SA National Civics Organisation for stirring up so-called service delivery protests.

ANC provincial secretary David Makhura said the provincial executive committee has visited various areas hit by service delivery protests and found “almost all service delivery protests are driven by a competition over resources”.

“Protests in Gauteng, including the latest in Mamelodi, are taking place in areas where there is a lot of development under way.”

ANC members and members of Sanco contesting to be appointed as community liaison officers during community development projects are fueling community unrests in some parts of the province, Makhura said.

- Sowetan

Chilling warning to Nyanga foreigners

2010-03-18T05:46:00.000-07:00

A threatening pamphlet has been distributed in Samora Machel in Nyanga, warning foreigners that they will "face the wrath of the community" if they fail to leave the area before Human Rights Day on Sunday.

Nyanga police are investigating the origin of the letter.

The letter was signed "Youth Leaders of Samora".

Police spokeswoman Captain Ntombixolo Sitshitshi said the station saw a copy on Wednesday.

"We are going to verify this information and investigate where it originates from. We will be engaging community leaders and the community policing forums to deal with the matter."

She said police would keep a close eye on the area.

Martin Makasi, the acting secretary of the Nyanga community policing forum, said: "Somewhere in the dark corners of the community these people are gathering and sending out these notes, but we will make sure that nobody is chased out of the area."

Makasi appealed to those who wrote the note to come forward, so that their issues could be addressed.

Braam Hanekom, the chairman of People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty, said Zimbabweans living in the area informed them about the flyer and the organisation informed police.

- Cape Argus

'We are tired of kwerekweres'

2010-02-28T05:46:00.000-08:00

Zimbabwean national Eugene Madondo is adamant that ANC and Albert Park ward councillor Vusi Khoza was the "ring leader" of the gang that attacked him at the Ventura Africa block of flats last year.

Madondo, who was the first state witness to testify at the start of the trial last year of Khoza and three others, returned to the Durban Regional Court yesterday to answer more questions from defence advocate Mike Mthembu.

Khoza, together with Patricia Ballantyne, 67, Mzokuthoba Mngonyama, 39, and Sean Thabo Jacobs, 24, have been charged with public violence.

They were allegedly part of the group that assembled unlawfully and entered the block of flats in Yusuf Dadoo (Broad) Street with the intention to assault, harass and instill fear in certain residents in January last year.

Jacobs has been charged with attempted murder for allegedly hitting Madondo with a stick or knobkerrie and forcing him off the fifth floor of the building with the intention to kill him. He has also been charged with damaging property - for allegedly breaking doors and windows at the flat.

All four have pleaded not guilty.

Madondo conceded yesterday, in questioning from Mthembu, that he had not mentioned in his statement to police that he recognised the man who had pointed at him and who had told the group that attacked him, "Here is another one". But he insisted that he did in fact see Khoza - the "ring leader" - clearly.

That information was not in his statement to police because it was taken while he was in hospital recovering from the injuries he had sustained in the attack, Madondo said.

"I was in so much pain," he told the court.

At the time of the incident it was reported that a mob had entered Ventura Africa and forced people to jump from the building.

Zimbabwean refugee Victor Zowa, 24, and Tanzanian national Said Omari, 22, died.

Last year, Madondo told the court that a group of men and women, singing and chanting anti-foreigner slogans, and armed with knobkerries, knives and sticks, had entered the block of flats.

He said the leader of the group, who he identified as Khoza, was saying: "We are tired of kwerekweres (a derogatory term for foreigners). We want to teach them a lesson."

According to Madondo, when Khoza saw him the councillor screamed: "Here is another one", and an elderly woman said: "Hit him".

He said Jacobs attacked him and Khoza instructed the men to throw him out.

Madondo recalled being pushed through the window head first.

He said he grabbed onto a pipe and tried to roll down it, but Jacobs hit the pipe with the knobkerrie and the pipe broke.

Madondo told the court he landed on top of one of the two motionless bodies he saw lying on the pavement outside the flat.

As result of the attack, Madondo spent more than a month in hospital and was treated for back injures, a broken leg and a fractured spine.

Yesterday, Mthembu put it to Madondo that he had made up his evidence about being able to see Khoza clearly, and that this was why the information was not in his statement to police.

Madondo responded: "You are mad if that is what you think."

The magistrate, Fariedha Mohamed, adjourned the case to today because other witnesses were not available yesterday.

- Daily News

Cape Zimbabweans scared

2010-02-25T12:28:00.000-08:00

Zimbabweans living in a temporary refugee camp in De Doorns stayed away from work yesterday after being frightened by rumours of a protest by locals.

The protest did not happen, but the Zimbabweans - who have been living in makeshift tents on a rugby field since November - said they were taking no chances and would not go to work.

In November, local residents drove scores of Zimbabweans out of their homes as tensions around working conditions on De Doorns farms spilled over.

Zimbabwean farmworkers in the camp said yesterday they had no idea why locals wanted to fight with them.

A 25-year-old married mother of a two-year-old boy said she was too scared to go to work at a nearby farm. At the end of the season, she said, she would return to Zimbabwe with her family.

Wendy Pekeur, secretary general of Sikula Sonke, an organisation representing the interests of farm labourers, said she and other members of the organisation first heard about the planned march while visiting locals in Stofland last weekend.

She said a white bakkie had been seen driving around with a man on the back making announcements with a loudhailer.

He had announced a local ANC meeting, to which residents were told they should bring their identity documents, and that they were to march on the refugee camp yesterday.

"He said they would be demand that the Zimbabweans leave the country," Pekeur said.

She could not identify the man with the loudhailer.

Breede Valley mayor Charles Ntsomi said he was aware of the announcement made in Stofland on Saturday afternoon, but that after investigating could confirm that the only announcement was about an ANC annual meeting to take place the following afternoon.

"I don't know why people are starting rumours," he said, adding that they wanted the Zimbabweans to live normal lives.

De Doorns police were also aware of the rumours, but said no protest march had taken place.

- Cape Argus

Foreigners' shops burned

2010-02-08T01:31:00.000-08:00

Violence flared up again at Siyathemba township in Balfour at the weekend where residents turned on foreign shop owners, Mpumalanga police said.

"They started last night [Sunday] and they burnt the shops of foreigners," said Sergeant Sam Tshabalala.

Tshabala said he would have more information on the protests later in the day.

Last year, President Jacob Zuma visited Balfour following a series of protests at Siyathemba where residents demanded the removal of all Mbombela municipal councillors.

In July, residents took to the streets, burning tyres and barricading roads. About 30 foreign nationals had to stay at the Balfour police station for safety reasons.

- Times Live

ANC Minister to Zimbabweans "Go home"

2010-02-07T21:09:00.000-08:00

South African Correctional Services Minister Nosiviwe Maphisa-Nqakula urged Zimbabwe's three governing parties to resolve political differences holding their coalition government in order to allow for speedy economic recovery necessary to attract back multitudes of Zimbabweans who have fled their home country.

She said: "My appeal to you Zimbabweans, please engage and dialogue in order to resolve your differences. Always remember that South Africa will never be your home, your home is in Zimbabwe, so resolve your problems and go back to your home."